Oral Answers to Questions

John McFall: I welcome the Calman report as a sound, thorough piece of evidential work. The evidence shows that in the financial crisis, with the loss of two of our dear banks in Scotland, Scotland on its own would not have been able to cope.  [ Interruption. ] Is there not a case— [ Interruption. ] Is there not a case for looking at the evidence, working for devolution, and ensuring that we have good government in health, education and community care— all areas that are crying out for good policies, which the Administration in Scotland are not delivering?

Jim Murphy: My right hon. Friend is typically right on the money. In his chairmanship of the Select Committee on Treasury, he shows great expertise on these issues. Despite the SNP heckling and haranguing him, the fact is that the £37 billion investment by the UK taxpayer in the two Scottish-based banks is more than the entire budget of the Scottish Government. That shows yet again that in good times the Union of the United Kingdom helps to make us all more prosperous, and in more difficult times it makes us safer and stronger.

David Mundell: We share the Secretary of State's welcome for the Calman commission. Does he note the contrast between the application and thoroughness of the interim Calman report and the so-called national conversation, which appears to be little more than a taxpayer-funded blog site for insomniac nationalists? Does he share my disappointment not only with the content but with the tone of the First Minister's response to the interim report? Will he therefore use his best endeavours to persuade the First Minister that now is the time to show that he is man not a mouse—to use the First Minister's own analogy—by abandoning the national conversation, which does not have the support of the Scottish Parliament, and by engaging, as many in the Scottish Government wish to do, in the Calman process?

Ben Wallace: It is clear that by next summer the Calman commission will have completed its work and a final report will be published. In the light of the fact that Scotland's First Minister and the Scottish National party are not really interested in better governance for Scotland— [Interruption.] We hear about the Tory-Labour pact, and I am in favour of pacts so far as the Union of the United Kingdom of Great Britain is concerned, as opposed to the ark of insolvency offered by the SNP and its swivel-eyed supporters. Will the Secretary of State please tell us his plans for the Government timetable when the final report is published in the summer?

Angus MacNeil: Will the Minister join the Scottish Government in supporting Scottish fishing communities and retain the quota in Scotland? We know that the Minister has been silent on the staggering £1 billion of cuts that Labour's pre-Budget report will deliver to Scotland. We know of the £120 million of consequential business spending to come to Scotland and of the HBOS measures, but there has again been silence, endangering 20,000 jobs in Scotland— [Interruption.]

William McCrea: The reality is that, right across the UK, small and medium-sized businesses are going to the wall because the banks are not extending credit on reasonable terms. We appreciate that action has been taken, but what further positive action can be taken to ensure that credit gets to the SMEs to stop them from going bust?

James Purnell: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement on our White Paper "Raising expectations and increasing support: reforming welfare for the future."
	This White Paper will transform lives. We know that the support that we offer helps people get back to work. It can turn lives around. We want to make sure that as many people as possible have this chance. That is why we want virtually everyone claiming benefits to be preparing for, or looking for, work. It is a fair deal—more support, in return for higher expectations.
	That is a deal that has always underpinned the welfare state. As early as 1911, those claiming from the unemployment exchange could be disqualified if they refused a suitable job offer. It is a deal that was extended by the Beveridge report, and one that was championed by the 1945 Labour Government.
	In 1947, Herbert Morrison said that
	"we have no hands or brains to waste, and no resources to fritter away on those who don't contribute to our national effort."
	Today, when the national effort is about a global downturn, we can no more afford to waste taxpayers' money on those who play the system than they could then. But most of all we cannot afford to waste a single person's talent.
	We inherited a welfare state in which fewer than a third of claimants had to do anything in return for their benefits. Even that third got paltry support to get back in to work, while the rest got nothing. That truly was a welfare state that wasted talent and money. We paid for the costs of failure because we were not prepared to invest in the possibility of change. This Government set about putting that right. We taxed the excess profits of the privatised utilities to create the new deal. We merged the Benefits Agency and the Employment Service to create Jobcentre Plus, so that everyone who signed on for benefits signed up for work, too. That was the first phase of reform—deepening the obligations to work, so that there was no fifth option of just staying on benefits. We saw that those obligations caused youth unemployment and long-term unemployment to tumble, so we set about the second phase of reform and widened the scope of those obligations to work. We piloted helping those on incapacity benefit, first with the new deal for disabled people and then with the groundbreaking pathways to work programme, which increases a person's chance of being in work by 25 per cent. Now we are rolling that out.
	Since April, we have required all new claimants to take part, except those with the most severe conditions, and in October, we replaced incapacity benefit with the employment and support allowance, which focuses on what people can do, not what they cannot do. We improved help for lone parents. With the help of the new deal for lone parents, over 300,000 more lone parents are in work, but we wanted more people to benefit, so we are requiring lone parents of children between the ages of seven and 16 to look for work. We expect that to increase employment and lift 70,000 children out of poverty.
	The White Paper will kick off the third phase of welfare reform. It is based on the simple idea that no one should be left behind, and that virtually everyone should be required to take up the support that we know works. It is built on the recommendations of two independent reviews, the Freud and Gregg reviews. The White Paper confirms that we will implement the Freud report in full, including his "invest to save" proposal, in which private and voluntary providers invest money in helping more people back in to work, and get paid out of the resulting benefit savings. Professor Paul Gregg's report was published last week. The White Paper confirms our support for his vision. It sets out how we will put it into legislation and pilot his recommendations so that nearly all claimants are either preparing for work or looking for work.
	We will migrate everyone on incapacity benefit on to the employment and support allowance. Under the new benefit, the poorest and most disabled will get nearly £16 a week extra. Everyone else will get support to manage their conditions and prepare for work. They will be required to attend interviews to develop their plan to do so, and advisers will be able to require them to implement that plan. We agree with the Gregg report's recommendation that parents should not be left until their youngest child is seven before they are given help to get back into, or prepare, for work.
	The support that we offer lone parents has been transformed since 1997. We pay a £40-a-week bonus to any lone parent going back into work. We pay 80 per cent. of their child care costs. We pay for travel costs to job interviews, and for interview clothes, if necessary. When the parent finds works, there is a £300 emergency fund to help them, if needed. We can also help people with more serious problems such as depression, debt or drug addiction. Most of all, we have made work pay. A lone parent who has one child and works 35 hours a week will be on at least £304 a week in April next year, compared to £182 in 1999. Thanks to the minimum wage and tax credits, such parents are now more than £100 a week better off.
	Our goal is simple: we want more parents to benefit from help, so that they can help themselves and their children. That is why conditionality is so important in the welfare state. Only 5 per cent. of incapacity benefit stock claimants voluntarily take up the support that the pathways to work programme offers, and only around one in four lone parents takes up the support offered by their new deal. Partners in couples in which no one is working face even fewer obligations than lone parents.
	The Gregg report found that
	"Conditionality backed with a regime of sanctions improves outcomes."
	As a result of such a regime, the UK enters the downturn with the second lowest unemployment rate in the G7. However, the report also found that countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands had lower unemployment and child poverty rates than the UK, so if we want to abolish child poverty and improve social mobility, we need a welfare state that learns from the example of those countries. The Queen's Speech made it clear that we will reinforce our commitment to ending child poverty in legislation that the Government will introduce in this Session. The White Paper is the other side of the coin, matching higher support with higher expectations.
	Some people say that we should be slowing down the pace of welfare reform because of the downturn. The Government believe that we should do exactly the opposite. We should not repeat the mistakes of the recessions of the '80s and '90s, when hundreds of thousands of people were shuffled on to inactive benefits to keep the unemployment count down, and trapped there without support, abandoned and scarring our communities. In contrast, we are investing £1.3 billion in helping people find work, but we will have increasing requirements of people the longer they are out of work, to make sure that they do not fall out of touch with the world of work. After a year, everyone will be allocated to a private or voluntary provider, and expected to do four weeks' full-time activity. After two years, we will pilot requiring people to work full time for their benefit.
	The White Paper will also support children whose parents' relationship has broken down. We will bring forward legislation so that it becomes the default option for both parents to register the birth of their child, whether they are married or not. And we will fully disregard child maintenance when working out income-related benefits from April 2010, so that children can take full advantage of the money provided for their upbringing.
	The White Paper also makes clear our intention to apply new benefit rules for problem heroin and crack users. Instead of receiving jobseeker's allowance, or the employment and support allowance, crack and heroin users will receive a treatment allowance, alongside an obligation that they address their problem.
	There needs to be help for people to find and keep work, as well as responsibilities to look for work, so we will double the access to work budget to allow more people than ever before the support that they need to stay in work, and because we recognise that disabled people are the experts in their own lives, we will legislate for disabled people to have the right to exercise choice and control over the support they receive from the state. This right to control will be a major step forward towards achieving equality for disabled people by 2025. It will be a transformation in the rights of disabled people.
	These reforms point the way to a fairer society where children do not grow up in poverty, disabled people enjoy real equality, and everyone is given real help to overcome the barriers to fulfilling their potential. Yes, the reforms are about looking after taxpayers' money, but they are also about looking after the future too, by making sure that we do not waste anybody's talent. I commend the statement to the House.

Chris Grayling: I would normally thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of his statement, but instead of doing that, may I ask him to explain to the House why he has given such an extensive briefing about the content of the statement over the past few days in the media? Does he not think that briefing the media in that way, ahead of the House, flies in the face of both the rulings that have come from the Chair in the past few months, and the now rather hollow commitments made by the Prime Minister when he was first elected to that position, about the importance of the House?
	I pay tribute to the work of David Freud. It was his report, commissioned by Tony Blair and comprehensively rejected by the current Prime Minister three years ago, that started the debate in Britain. When we published our Green Paper in January, we drew heavily on David Freud's work and added to it the recommendations for mandatory community work to be added to the back to work process in the UK. All those recommendations—David Freud's and ours—have now, it appears, been adopted by the Government.
	We know that the Secretary of State will face a big rebellion on his Back Benches, so may I assure him that we will give the proposals our support? We know that his Back Benchers, his union backers and his own social security adviser are clearly opposed to the measures, but as much of what he is proposing comes from the work that we published in January, I can assure him that Conservative votes will help the measures on to the statute book, even if Labour Members try to stop them.
	There will certainly be issues for debate when the Bill comes before the House. I think the Government are wrong to extend from six months to 12 months the date when young people are referred for specialist back to work support. We would change that in government. I am glad the Secretary of State agreed with me that the proposals in the Gregg report to make lone parents of one-year-olds prepare for work were just plain wrong. Even so, I remain unconvinced by some of his other proposals on lone parents, and we will want to debate those vigorously when the Bill comes before the House. There are far too many pilots in the proposals. After 11 years in office, surely the Government can, for a change, do something properly and not just pilot it.
	There is one huge, unanswered issue, on which I would like the Secretary of State to concentrate his response to me. He has rightly accepted our proposal to put every single person currently claiming incapacity benefit through an independent medical assessment; that is clearly the right thing to do. However, it will also be a complete waste of time if adequate back-to-work places are not available for the people who go through the test and are told that they have the ability to prepare for work.
	Our intention was always to fund those extra places for a proportion of 2.6 million people through the so-called departmental expenditure limits-annual managed expenditure, or DEL-AME, switch—the invest-to-save mechanism—using initial savings from getting people off benefits and into work to fund the cost of the programmes that get them there. The Secretary of State has said only that he intends to pilot that plan in two areas after 2010. However, the assessments start in 2010. What will happen in the rest of the country? Where will the extra places come from, and how much extra money does the Secretary of State have to put into the budget for pathways to work programme after 2010 to pay for those extra places? If those places are not there, many of these proposals will not be worth the paper on which they are written.
	We have had a wasted decade for welfare reform. The Government promised change, but failed to deliver it in the good times. Now unemployment is rising and these proposals will be much more difficult to deliver. The measures in the White Paper are mostly right for Britain and we will vote for them. It is a shame, however, that the Government have talked for so long and done so little. Let us hope that, this time, they will finally do something—start the real reform process and establish proper foundations for change that will enable the next Conservative Government finally to end Britain's entitlement culture.

James Purnell: I am glad that at last the hon. Gentleman has acknowledged that it was this Labour Government who commissioned the Freud report; normally, he goes around creating the impression that it was his report. We are implementing it in full in this White Paper.
	I am slightly confused about the hon. Gentleman's position on these welfare reforms. Originally, he said that the Opposition would welcome the proposals enthusiastically; last week, he said that he thought that we were going a bit over the top; on Sunday, he said that the proposals did not constitute welfare reform; and by Monday, he went back to saying that he would back them enthusiastically. That is confusing, but the confusion is not mine—it is due to the fact that the policy of the Conservative party is confused. It does not know what it thinks because its modernisation was a spray job. It is increasingly falling back on exactly the ideas of the '80s and '90s that created the problems in the welfare state which we have had to address.
	The hon. Gentleman used to say that he would give these proposals his full backing. However, if people listen to what he has said today, I think that they will see that he is trying to maintain a tiny bit of wriggle room. I tell him this: he can either be statesman-like and do the right thing for the country or play politics. He cannot do both at the same time. That is the test to which we shall hold him—will he support the full reforms in the White Paper or will he try to have his cake and eat it, and play politics while trying to say that he is doing the right thing?
	The hon. Gentleman raised a number of points. He said that he wanted me to direct my remarks to the questions about extra funding. There is extra funding in this package for the pathways to work programme to be extended to people who are migrating from incapacity benefit to ESA. He has no such funding at all. Given his party leader's remarks yesterday on the radio, he has a real problem. He would have to cut spending in our Department. The Conservatives said that the borrowing in the pre-Budget report was reckless, but it allocated an extra £1 billion and this White Paper allocates still further money. None of that would be available to him. He has already committed to cutting the new deal, and he would have to make even further cuts.
	The hon. Gentleman said that he would bring forward further proposals. We will apply three tests to them. First, are they fair? Secondly, would they work? Thirdly, how would they be funded? There is no point in his bringing forward theoretical proposals for which he has no money. He cannot just go around talking about the invest-to-save proposals as if they were some kind of magical piggy bank. We can proceed only at the pace that David Freud recommended.
	The hon. Gentleman suggested that we were not implementing David Freud's proposals, but he has an article in today's papers saying that we are doing exactly what he recommended. It is right that we should do what he said, which is to pilot the scheme, not in two areas but in five, and then to make sure that we evaluate it and roll it out on the basis of that success. That is exactly what David Freud recommended.
	The hon. Gentleman can no longer go around saying that there will be extra money from that process, because it is simply not available under his proposals. Nor can he say that he would pay for what he calls "ending the couples penalty" out of further welfare savings. He agrees with what we are doing, so there would be no further welfare savings to be had. I hope that in future he will make it clear that he would have no money for his proposal.
	The hon. Gentleman has completely misunderstood the Gregg report. It does not say that we should make parents look for work when their child is aged one—it says that people should prepare for work. It gives them ownership of their own journey back into work. It says that they should be able to develop a personalised action plan, but then, as their children get older, in certain circumstances it is also right that they should be required to carry out that action plan. Like the rest of the White Paper, this proposal is about reducing child poverty, reducing unemployment and transforming lives. We believe in this because we think that the welfare state is the solution; the Conservatives do not, because they believe that the welfare state is the problem. On Sunday, the hon. Gentleman's leader said that 5 million people in this country could all be a potential Karen Matthews. That is an insult to people on benefits, and it lets people like Karen Matthews off the hook. I think that in future Conservative Members should dissociate themselves from their leader's remarks.

David Blunkett: I commend the Secretary of State for the White Paper, particularly the move to greater flexibility for advisers and for the invest-to-save project. Does he agree that the global downturn means that many more people, in addition to the 2.5 million who already rely on legal, but very high, domestic credit repayments will require support and help? Does he also agree that the consultation launched a fortnight ago on the reform of the social fund should lead to a much more radical approach based on the partnerships in invest-to-save projects that would allow the public, private and voluntary sectors to expand dramatically the availability of affordable credit to the millions of people who would otherwise find themselves reliant on loan sharks who demand with incredible payments that those people cannot afford to make?

Jennifer Willott: I thank the Secretary of State for advance notice of the statement. I agree with the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), however, that it is disappointing that the Secretary of State held a press briefing on these measures before he came to the House, although both that briefing and the statement are almost pointless given the extent to which the proposals were trailed in the media over the weekend.
	The Government have not consulted on the proposal to push lone parents with children as young as three or four years of age from income support on to JSA, because it was not in the Green Paper, although it was trailed quite strongly at the weekend. Clearly, it was not proposed earlier because the Secretary of State knew that there would be very little support for it, least of all among his own Back Benchers, and certainly among civil society organisations, which have raised serious concerns about that proposal. It is far too soon to consider such a proposal given that the Government have only recently brought in changes to the regime for lone parents and have not even assessed the progress of those changes. It was only three weeks ago that the Government started to move 300,000 lone parents from income support on to JSA. Many organisations, including the Social Security Advisory Committee, and many Members of this House, have expressed concerns about whether enough flexible working opportunities, affordable child care, and appropriate personalised support are available. It is worrying that there is not yet enough evidence to suggest whether those changes will be successful and what their impact will be on child poverty. The Government have already admitted that they cannot guarantee that lone parents will be better off as a result of the changes that have already been introduced, so why is the Secretary of State proposing to go so much further before they have even evaluated those changes?
	Why is Labour attacking lone parents and demonising people who are losing their jobs during a recession? The Secretary of State said that some people say that we should be slowing down the pace of welfare reform because of the downturn. Liberal Democrats are not saying that; instead, we believe that he should take account of the downturn and not penalise people who are suffering as a result. He referred to people who are long-term unemployed as "offenders", which is not only counter-productive but also illuminating. The work-for-the dole proposals treat the long-term unemployed as though they were criminals on community service. The rhetoric that is being used demonises those who are on benefits. International examples show that the work-for-the dole option is not a success—it does nothing to develop skills and confidence and nothing to make people more employable. Why are the Government pushing ahead with a policy that has been shown to fail internationally?
	On tailored support, the Secretary of State talks about responsibilities. We all share the view that people have responsibilities, but so do the Government. Beveridge strongly believed in helping people back into work. Why, under the JSA regime, is there no tailored support until somebody has been unemployed for a year? That is a very long time to wait when everybody agrees that early intervention is absolutely crucial in getting people back into work.
	The Government are talking about making sanctions stronger. The Secretary of State says that he is implementing the Gregg review, but he seems to be overlooking the parts where Professor Gregg said that before introducing stricter sanctions, the Government had to ensure that they introduced proper tailored support for individuals. The Government seem to be picking the bits that they like and ignoring the bits that they do not like. Could the Secretary of State confirm whether he is going to implement all the recommendations in the Gregg report or only the bits that the Tories like? At the heart of the approach that the Government are proposing is the idea that work is the best route out of poverty. Of course, everybody agrees that that should be the case, but given that more than half of children in poverty have a working parent, work does not always pay at the moment. Before the Government sanction people, they need to ensure that people are better off in work. Can the Secretary of State confirm how he is going to ensure that the changes will not just move people from out-of-work poverty to in-work poverty?
	These proposals highlight primarily the fact that the Tories are showing their true colours—gone seems to be compassionate conservatism. It is hard to know who is hanging on the coat tails of whom. The Tories and the Government are arguing about whose idea was whose—they almost come across as squabbling brothers. We all agree that the system needs to be overhauled, but for the Government merely to target the most vulnerable and play "Are you tough enough?" with the Tories is not the way forward.

James Purnell: I did not hold a press briefing, and I hope that the hon. Lady will withdraw that comment.
	The hon. Lady has fundamentally misunderstood what this is all about. It is about transforming people's lives. It is about ensuring that we provide people with help and support so that they can get back into work and help their children to have a better standard of living and high aspirations for themselves. That is exactly the right thing to be doing.
	On lone parents and the Gregg review, we are not saying that we are going to bring in those changes before the lone parent changes that are currently being introduced. This is about the next stage of welfare reform. It is right that lone parents should have to look for work when their child reaches the lower age of seven years, but Paul Gregg was not saying that parents of younger children should be made to work, or to look for work, but that they should prepare for work. We have fantastic help for people who need to get out of debt or to address serious issues such as mental health or drug problems. We also have help in relation to child care, confidence issues and training. It is right that people should go in and develop an action plan so that they can prepare for work, but then also, at the right time, be expected to take it up. It is all about ensuring that we end child poverty in this country—something that the Liberal Democrats have said is an "unnecessary distraction". They are neither prepared to put in the support for people nor to address their high expectations to ensure that they get back into work to help themselves out of poverty.
	This is the right approach that builds on the best approaches around the world, which involve full-time activity among other things. The hon. Lady is wrong to say that international evidence shows that that does not work. It does not work if that activity is of low quality, has no job search and does not help people to develop skills. It does work, however, if it involves full-time activity that teaches people skills, such as turning up on time and being presentable, and it ensures that people are looking for work. That approach is followed in countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark, and we will follow that approach because it is right for people.
	The hon. Lady says that we should not deal with people who are repeatedly failing to live up to their obligations. I completely disagree. If people are taking money and playing the system without trying to get back into work, that is an abuse of the system. It is wrong for people to do that, and requiring those who do it to undertake full-time activity in return for benefits is the right approach because it is not fair on everyone else if they abuse the system in that way.
	Finally, the hon. Lady asked what we will do to make work pay. We have transformed the situation; a lone parent working for a full week is more than £100 better off than in 1999, and that is even more than they would have had before 1997 thanks to the introduction of the minimum wage, which her party opposed. On top of that, we pay a £40 premium per week for people when they go into work. We are also piloting a £25 better-off guarantee. That is the right approach: more support and higher expectations. I am sorry that she does not support it.

Roger Berry: I thank my right hon. Friend for his continuing efforts to support more disabled people and others getting into work. Does he agree that some media reports about the threat of sanctions against benefit recipients have caused anxiety among many people, not least those with mental health conditions? Such reports can be incredibly counterproductive in relation to what the Government seek to do. Moreover, they may discourage those entitled to benefits from claiming them. Can my right hon. Friend say how he intends to address those concerns?

Iain Duncan Smith: I start by welcoming the statement. As the Secretary of State knows, a year ago, the Centre for Social Justice published a series of reforms, many of which went alongside Freud, but some went slightly further. What the Secretary of State is saying is along those lines, so I welcome what he says. As he knows, the Centre for Social Justice and I have worked with the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on early-years intervention, and on the idea that empathy and bonding between the age of one and two is vital. I suspect that that idea, which I recommend, is reflected by his rejection of any talk of forcing people into work at that stage of a child's life.
	I would, however, like to raise one issue. The Secretary of State talked about a lot of ways of getting lone parents back into work, and we know how difficult that is. When he refers to 32 hours work a week actually paying he is right, but one of the biggest problems is that many of the lone parents that we saw who worked between 16 and 32 hours complained hugely about the massive withdrawal rates that they suffered. I know that the issue is a difficult one, but the benefit block means that some of them only take back 10p in the pound for each of the hours that they work. That is a major issue and a disincentive for many of them. Losing housing benefit after falling out of employment and then finding it can take months to get it back is a major disincentive. Will he consider those matters in the next few months and bring some suggestions forward?

James Purnell: My hon. Friend makes an important point, and she gives me the opportunity to make clear that this is not about targeting lone parents. In fact, the people who have the least obligations in the system at the moment are couples who are parents and are out of work. We want to ensure that we expect the same of them as we do of lone parents. That is the right thing to do. She is also right about the centrality of child care. We have made it clear in our reforms to the regime for lone parents and the jobseeker's allowance that if there is no appropriate child care, parents should not be expected to take up work, because that child care should be the first priority. We need to continue to expand child care. We have doubled investment. As she knows, from 2010, all secondary schools will be expected to have wrap-around child care in the evenings and before school, and we need to ensure that people have that support in the holidays—that is very important for people.

Mark Durkan: I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. Some of us, however, are unsure of some of his proposals because of our constituency experience. Can he colour in for us how the right to control will be meaningful for disabled people, and whether it will apply to people with all recognised long-term conditions? On invest to save, and the proposal that the private and voluntary sectors should compete to win commission-driven contracts, how will he ensure that the process works in a fair way, and which allows the voluntary sector credibly to compete? What scale of investment will it need to muster, and will the process disadvantage areas where there are recognised concentrations of high, long-term unemployment, where such contracts will be less attractive? If conditionality and sanctions are to be the order of the day for lone parents and other people on modest benefits, when will the Government extend that principle to the banks?

James Purnell: The problem that we inherited from the right hon. Gentleman—he was one of my predecessors—is that the money was not put in to help people back into work. The Conservative Government cut benefits, not unemployment queues, and the number of those claiming incapacity benefit increased from 700,000 to 2.6 million. We now have a million fewer people on benefits precisely because we have been prepared to do what he never did: invest money in getting people back into work, rather than just paying the cost of the failure to do so.
	The right hon. Gentleman is right that we want to put money into getting people back into work precisely to reduce the costs of their not working. That is exactly the right thing to do. In relation to child maintenance, we are trying to solve the problem of the way in which the Child Support Agency was created, which meant that benefits were going straight to the Treasury, not to parents. There was no proper incentive for people to give money to their ex-partner, because they thought it would go to the taxpayer rather than to the parent. This measure means that money will go to the children. It has been widely welcomed and it is absolutely the right thing to do.

James Purnell: I do not know if we can go as far as self-certification, but I know that my hon. Friend has met ministerial colleagues about that case, which he feels is distressing. Those decisions are taken independently of Ministers by medical professionals, but I am happy to look at the case and see whether any general lessons can be learned for the work capability assessment, which will part of the employment and support allowance regime.

Anne McGuire: I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement and ask him to recognise that some of the fears that individuals and organisations are expressing are founded on their experience during the '80s and '90s when, along with colleagues such as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson), we had to manage training programmes that were little about support or individuality. During the consultation on the White Paper, will he recognise those fears and emphasise that conditionality is about investment in people, not benefit cuts?

John Penrose: Will the Secretary of State provide a little more detail to that part of his statement when he said that instead of receiving jobseeker's allowance or employment and support allowance, crack and heroin users will receive a treatment allowance, alongside an obligation that they address their problem? Will he tell the House whether that is confined to just crack and heroin or whether it extends to other addictive drugs and alcohol? Will he also explain what protections he plans to build into the disbursement mechanism to reduce the risk of vulnerable drug addicts going out and spending the money inappropriately? Will he confirm that the obligation that they address their problems is a—

Anne Main: I noted with the interest the Secretary of State's statement that the sanction for those not meeting the conditions would be having to work for their benefits. What will be the ultimate sanction for anyone who refuses to work for their benefits or to participate in a scheme? Who will monitor how well the schemes are working, if it is a private or public provider giving feedback on whether people are complying and getting something out of the system?

James Purnell: Within the regime for lone parents, they can choose part-time work after their child is seven if they think that it is the right thing for them. If a lone parent's child is disabled, they do not have to be looking for work. If there is a problem or crisis, such as the child being excluded from school, the system is flexible, in order to ensure that people can best balance looking after their children and working, exactly as she describes.

Clive Efford: Further to the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Hamilton), will Secretary of State tell us what will be done to change the culture among some of the people in his Department? A constituent of mine, a bricklayer, suffered a hernia and had to undergo an operation. He contracted an infection and, while he was waiting for his fourth operation, he was told that he had not scored enough points on his incapacity benefit form. He had an open wound in his stomach, yet he was told that he was fit for work and that he should go on to jobseeker's allowance. That decision was callous and wrong, and it was not overturned on appeal. If we are going to deal with such people in the way that my hon. Friend has suggested, we need to deal with them as people and not through forms and box ticking. Will the Secretary of State assure the House that, where such a culture exists in his Department, it will be changed?

Debate on the Address
	 — 
	[4th Day]

David Miliband: I am delighted to introduce this annual debate on the Gracious Speech, not least as the amendment tabled by the Leader of the Opposition does not mention foreign affairs or, indeed, any queries, questions or condemnations of the Government's foreign affairs policy. I look forward to a debate that I can only assume will be more akin to a senior common room discussion than what sometimes passes for debate in the House of Commons. I hope that the House will understand that no discourtesy is intended when I leave the Chamber to spend two hours before the Foreign Affairs Committee later this afternoon, which means that I will not be able to hear all the speeches.
	Every year seems like an important year in foreign policy, but 2009 promises what I think will be a unique combination of dangers and opportunities. The dangers are a global economic crisis, an unremitting terrorist threat, a closing window of opportunity to bring a two-state solution to the middle east, the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and, in Africa, crises in Somalia, Sudan, Congo and Zimbabwe. It would be a mistake, however, to become so mired in challenges that we overlook the opportunities—not least a new US Administration who are committed to joint action on shared priorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, on climate change and global warming, and on nuclear non-proliferation and international institutional reform.
	Five foreign policy priorities will guide the Government's work. In all of them, we depend on the bravery, intelligence and dedication of soldiers, diplomats and aid workers. Many are at risk, and 305 members of our armed forces have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are truly in their debt and that of their families for their patriotism, their public service and their internationalism.

Sammy Wilson: On a recent visit to Iraq, a number of us observed the pride taken by those serving on our behalf in the work that they were doing in rebuilding the area surrounding Basra and training the security forces and army. They made very clear their belief that they had an important job to do, and that they were doing that important job and doing it proudly. They also made clear that they did not want to see their work undone by a political decision to pull them out quickly before it had been completed. May we have a an assurance that the foundations that have been laid will be built upon before any quick decision is made?

David Miliband: He is going to respond to the UN Secretary-General's request for a bridging EU force, and examine its feasibility and desirability.
	Yesterday the hon. Gentleman referred to a large number of countries which, at the European General Affairs and External Relations Council, had said that something must be done in the name of Europe. Let me gently say to him that none of the countries that said that something must be done were willing to put their own troops into the mix to help to get it done. I think that that demonstrates that Javier Solana has quite a difficult job to do in addressing both the feasibility and the desirability of a force. However, he is acting in good faith, and we will certainly support him. I imagine that the issue will be discussed tomorrow night at the European Foreign Ministers' dinner, or at least in the margins of it, and I shall be happy to report to the House on the progress that Javier Solana is making.
	Let me now respond to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) about the political process. Any troops must accompany a viable political process, which is why we are supporting former Nigerian President Obasanjo's mediation between the rebels in the National Congress for the Defence of the People and the Government of the DRC. Relations between the Rwandan and DRC Governments have shown signs of improvement in recent weeks, since the visit with French Foreign Minister Kouchner, and they have agreed a joint plan to tackle the FDLR—the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda—militias, but we will need to maintain the political pressure if real progress is to be made.
	Political process along both axes of the conflict in Sudan is vital, too. We will continue to support the United Nations-African Union mediation over Darfur, as well as full implementation of the north-south comprehensive peace agreement. In both the DRC and Sudan, our humanitarian spend is one measure of our political commitment. We are Sudan's second largest bilateral donor, and during 2009-10 total DFID spending in the DRC will rise to £100 million.
	In Zimbabwe, we are already the second biggest bilateral donor, along with the US. The cholera epidemic has now precipitated a state of national emergency and we are stepping up our humanitarian response to help to alleviate the appalling suffering, but the long-term future depends on political change. There is unanimity across the House on the cause of Zimbabwe's descent into ruin: the Government of Robert Mugabe. There was unanimity last July when the Government urged the UN Security Council to apply direct pressure on the regime. I hope there can be unanimity today in honest explanation to the British public of the following points: that there can be no solution in Zimbabwe without the engagement of neighbouring African countries; that we should remain committed to offering our support for a broad-based Government reflecting the March election results; and that the UN is an appropriate forum to discuss this issue, because there is no way Zimbabwe can be considered an "internal affair". I also hope there will be unanimity that we must reiterate time and again our commitment to, and preparation to help, the people of Zimbabwe with thorough-going economic, social and political support when they have a Government that can credibly advance their interests rather than abuse them.

Kate Hoey: I pay tribute the Foreign Secretary for the work he has done on this issue over a long period. He seemed to disregard the views of the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) about a boycott and closing off the borders to petrol and diesel. Does he not agree with the President of Botswana, who said in this very place that he felt that would be an extremely good idea and it would bring about the end of the Mugabe regime within a week?

David Miliband: I pay tribute in return to my hon. Friend, who has done extraordinary work on this issue over a long period. I hope it was not felt that in my answer to the right hon. and learned Gentleman there was any sense of disregarding or denunciating the suggestion, because it was made in good faith and it is a serious suggestion—and whether we should advocate it is, of course, discussed. What I tried to explain in my reply to the right hon. and learned Gentleman was the genuine dilemma we face.
	We see a situation of crushing inhumanity—of death and destruction on a completely needless scale—and we face an option that is put forward perfectly legitimately that would, by any estimate, add to that death and destruction in the name of a change in the regime. The reason why we have so far come out against that policy is because the death and destruction it would impose would impact last on the members of the regime and first on the most vulnerable members of Zimbabwean society. That is in no way to disregard this suggestion, and I hope it did not seem that my response was dismissive. As I have said, it deserves a serious response, but in seeking to tackle the cause of the current death and destruction we all have to weigh up whether or not we are ourselves willing to cause death and destruction to completely innocent people. That is something we have not been willing to do, both in respect of the fuel issue and the trade issue, which also raises difficult questions.
	I wish to make one other point on this topic. I think we all believe that Morgan Tsvangirai won a presidential and parliamentary victory in the elections, and at no stage has he advocated this policy. That is an important point to remember when we think about what is the right thing to do in these circumstances. At no stage has he advocated that, either publicly or privately.

William Hague: My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. He is right, and the story to which he draws attention is part of the corruption, mismanagement and despotism with which Robert Mugabe has destroyed his country. This country can be proud of what we have tried to do in Zimbabwe in the past and in recent years, but now we need stronger co-operation from South Africa and other neighbouring states to bring what we hope for to fruition.
	We must not forget that the conflict in Darfur goes on—the Foreign Secretary also referred to it. Out of 6 million Darfuris, 5 million are either in camps or relying on food aid to survive. The humanitarian operation there is becoming ever more hazardous, and access to refugees has become increasingly restricted: 11 aid workers have been killed this year. The House will recall that in July last year the Prime Minister and President Sarkozy announced that Darfur would be one of their top priorities and committed themselves to doing everything possible to bring the necessary international presence there, but, 16 months since UN Resolution 1769 was passed, the UN-AU mission has only 10,000 troops and police—less than half what was intended—and is still desperately short of the helicopters that are essential for its effective operation. I accept that the Government share our concern about this state of affairs, but it is now abundantly clear that the Sudanese Government will not act unless under pressure. I hope that Ministers will therefore consider calls for sanctions on the regime. I hope that they will also take a deeply sceptical attitude to the proposed suspension of International Criminal Court proceedings against President Bashir of Sudan in return for Khartoum's co-operation on other issues—a suspension that risks sending the message to some of the world's despotic leaders that they can act with impunity while the international community watches but does not act, which is another parallel with Zimbabwe.
	More prominent in the headlines has been the appalling violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which was also referred to by the Foreign Secretary. We support the Government in hoping that the talks led by former Nigerian President Obasanjo will be successful. Again, we are concerned about the delay in the deployment of additional UN forces that was authorised on 20 November. The Belgian Foreign Minister has talked of a European force being sent to the DRC while reinforcements of UN peacekeepers are awaited. We would appreciate more information from Ministers, perhaps after this weekend's summit, about whether it is proposed that that would happen.
	Next in the pattern of under-resourced peacekeeping forces and intermittent international political will has been the situation in Somalia and off its coast. The African Union force in Somalia is deployed with barely a third of the troops required under its mandate. Ethiopia has announced that it will soon withdraw its troops, raising the prospect of further violence. The security vacuum is fuelling piracy in the gulf of Aden and beyond. It is almost unbelievable that large-scale piracy can take off to such an extent in the modern age, but the fact that it has done so requires a decisive international response.
	Of course, naval forces, including our own, are now doing sterling work off the horn of Africa, but I suggest to the Government that two aspects of that work require further attention. First, three naval operations appear to be taking place in the region involving a combined international taskforce, a deployment of the standing NATO maritime group and now an EU maritime operation. Would it not be better if there was a single command for the currently separate EU and NATO missions, especially since NATO is reported to be considering a significant expansion of its operation?
	In addition, the rules of engagement appear to differ for the three different missions and there have been some suggestions that the Government have discouraged the Royal Navy from detaining pirates because that might breach their human rights or tempt them to claim asylum in the United Kingdom—

William Hague: I share my hon. Friend's puzzlement. He is really asking a question of the Defence Secretary, who will reply to the debate, through my speech. As the Defence Secretary is scribbling furiously, I hope that he will answer that question in addition to those that I have raised about the Government's approach.
	Let me turn to the middle east. It is a matter of great relief that the situation in Iraq has continued to improve through the course of this year. In welcoming the fact that our troops should be able to withdraw from Iraq in the coming months, we must never lose sight of the fact that 177 British armed forces personnel or MOD civilians have died serving there and that our forces have now been deployed there for more than 2,000 days, a commitment that is now longer than that for the whole of the second world war.
	Alongside our hopes for continued improvement in Iraq, are there not now several issues of particular concern to us in British-Iraqi relations? One of course is the legal status of our troops in Iraq after the expiry of the UN mandate at the end of this month. The Defence Secretary has said that the Government expect to conclude an agreement at the end of the year, but I hope that he will be able to tell us when the negotiations began, what the terms might be and what link will be established to the agreement on US forces in Iraq. Very little information has been given to Parliament and there has been no statement on this subject.
	I hope that the Government will also raise energetically with the Government of Iraq the human suffering wrought by the targeting of Iraq's minorities, including its Christian population. I hope they will also emphasise the situation of Iraq's 4.7 million refugees and displaced people, some of whom are in an increasingly desperate position. The situation is a recipe for instability and radicalisation in the region and must surely be a high priority for this country and our allies in our discussions with Iraqi Ministers.
	The Opposition continue to believe that parliamentary accountability and the scrutiny of foreign and defence policy need to be improved, with regular quarterly reports to Parliament of objectives set and goals attained when our troops are deployed overseas in action. The complexity of Iraq's politics, its military situation and the need for strong regional support mechanisms for the Iraqi state easily merit a full day's debate in this House, particularly given the expenditure of £6.5 billion of taxpayers' money on our operations in Iraq.
	The impending withdrawal of our forces brings us to two other issues. First, it was announced to the press overnight last night:
	"The withdrawal of the 4,000 British troops in Iraq will be completed by next June, a senior defence source has disclosed"—
	 [ Interruption. ] I am reading from a newspaper article, but the reports appeared in several newspapers and in the absence of Government announcements the rest of the House has to make do with what the newspapers say. The report goes on:
	"The Prime Minister is expected to make an announcement in the New Year laying out the timetable"
	for the troops to pull out. Other newspapers lay out the rest of the timetable, saying that the withdrawal will begin in March and will be finished in June.
	If it is true, that information should have been given to Parliament in the form of a statement to the House of Commons. If it is not true, the Foreign Secretary, who is shaking his head, can get up and say so. The reports have the appearance of an authoritative leak and since this time national security is involved, perhaps it might be appropriate for the perpetrator to be arrested.
	The Government deplore leaks by day and live by them by night. Ministers either have no control over their Departments or are deliberately sanctioning such behaviour. I hope that when the Defence Secretary winds up he will tell us which of those alternatives is true and whether the leak is correct. He can deny it if he wishes to do so.
	We certainly hope that our troops can be withdrawn from Iraq as soon as is consistent with the security of that country, but if announcements are good enough for the newspapers, they should be good enough for the House of Commons. The other issue, which we have debated many times already in the House and which has already been brought up in questions to the Home Secretary, is the question of a full-scale inquiry into the origins and conduct of the war. In a speech in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago, the Foreign Secretary said that
	"despite good intentions in Iraq, and current progress, it is clear that serious mistakes were made."
	He must surely agree that if that is the case, it is important to examine what those mistakes were and what has been done to ensure that they will not be repeated.
	When we last debated the issue in the House, on 25 March, the Foreign Secretary said that
	"there is agreement across the House that an inquiry into the Iraq war will be necessary...The dispute between us concerns not substance, but timing.—[ Official Report, 25 March 2008; Vol. 474, c. 52.]
	Since the Government now speak of "tasks completed" and "fundamental change" in our mission in Iraq, and are happy to see it announced in the press that the major deployment of British troops will come to an end in June, it must surely be time for them to make clear their intentions on an inquiry. Once again, I serve notice that if they fail to do that, we will return to the issue during this Session and the continued absence of an inquiry, or its setting up on an inadequate basis, will be rectified immediately on the election of a Conservative Government.
	The issues of parliamentary accountability and learning from mistakes bring us to the situation in Afghanistan, which is now much more alarming than that in Iraq. Once again we have British forces performing a role that is nothing short of heroic. The problems they face hardly need restating, so I shall only restate them briefly. Support from other NATO members is either insufficient in quantity or too hedged about with caveats, the civil aid and reconstruction programme is still not sufficiently well co-ordinated, the drugs trade continues on a vast scale and partly finances the insurgency, local police forces are ineffective and mistrusted and corruption still appears to be endemic in the Afghan state. That is quite a list of problems.
	It is clearly not within the gift of the British Government to solve all the problems on their own, but it may be no exaggeration to say that the fate of Afghanistan may rest on the review of strategy being conducted by General Petraeus, and on the new momentum that President-elect Obama clearly intends to bring to this area. It seems likely that the US will send a large number of additional troops to Afghanistan and that it will expect other NATO nations to do the same, alongside making a commitment to deploy some troops in the south, where British forces have borne the brunt of the fighting. That should be welcomed, but I hope that Ministers will be clear that any request for additional British forces will be considered in the context of the severe overstretch of our armed forces and their equipment, and of the disproportionate share of the burden that British troops have carried over the past three years.
	Like the Government, the Opposition have not ruled out supporting some increase in the level of British forces. We have gone out of our way to support the Government over Afghanistan and we always support our troops when they are deployed in combat but, if we are to support a further increase in our troop levels in Afghanistan, we would expect from the Government a clear explanation of the military necessity and purpose of such a deployment, an increase in the number of helicopters to ensure that our troops are properly mobile, improvements in equipment and protection for our troops, better co-ordination of aid and les corruption and better governance by the Afghans.
	Furthermore, any additional British commitment should be accompanied by greater commitment by other NATO allies and a step change in the level of their effort and readiness to engage in actual fighting. It should be part of a revised and comprehensive strategy covering all the civil, political and military aspects that I have already mentioned, and it should be followed by improved communication to Parliament of British objectives and the progress in meeting them.
	It is only through tabling written questions that we have learned that the UK
	"has been asked to provide assistance to a US-led review of American defence and security policy",
	and that the Government have
	"provided a combined team to contribute to this work."—[ Official Report, 10 November 2008; Vol. 482, c. 877W.]
	We were also told that the team is now "fully embedded" in the American review process, and that it consists of 17 of our officials in Washington drawn from the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development.
	In another written answer—because we have had no recent parliamentary statement on the matter—we also learned on 10 November that the Government had established a "formal review mechanism" this year to produce a detailed periodic assessment of the situation in Afghanistan. Three weeks later, the Prime Minister announced it to the House as if it were a new development. We welcome the review, but it is something that should have been done on a cross-departmental basis at the beginning of the conflict, not many years into it, and it should lead to regular reports to the nation.
	The situation in Afghanistan is obviously at or near the top of the foreign policy priorities of the new Administration in Washington, and so it should be. Alongside it, presumably, will be the ever more urgent need for a diplomatic solution to the impasse over Iran's nuclear programme. The plain fact is that Iran today is on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, with all the massive risks that that brings of nuclear proliferation in the middle east or war with Israel.
	According to the latest report by the International Atomic Energy Authority, by next month—that is, January—Iran will have accumulated a stockpile of nearly 1,000 kg of low-enriched uranium, an amount considered to be enough to produce 20 kg of weapons-grade uranium, or enough for one nuclear weapon after further enrichment. What stands between Iran and that goal is not, unfortunately, a united international community, but a series of technical hurdles whose resolution is only a matter of time.
	We do not know, of course, what opening will be made to Iran by the new US Administration, but we do know that time is running out if the world is not to enter a new era of nuclear insecurity. And whatever initiative the US takes, the chances of Iran responding positively to it must surely be increased if President-elect Obama is speaking from a position of strength and of strong but peaceful European pressure on Iran.
	It is now more than a year since the Prime Minister announced that he was working for a ban on European investment in Iranian oil and gas fields, yet as of today there are no restrictions on European companies making new investments in such fields. There is still no formal Europe-wide ban on export credit guarantees that subsidise trade with Iran, and a swathe of Iranian companies are still involved in Iran's nuclear programme, which the United States has targeted but which European nations have not.
	I am sure that the Foreign Secretary agrees with me that America's carrot will be more attractive to Iran if Europe carries a bigger stick. We recognise that it is difficult to achieve European agreement on these issues but it is galling to hear Iran's deputy Commerce Minister boast, as he did last month, that 67 per cent. of Iran's $140 billion foreign trade in 2007 came from Europe, and from Germany, France and Italy in particular. He also said:
	"EU members are not paying any attention to the UN resolutions against Iran".
	I think that that was an exaggeration, but the fact that he felt able to say that is alarming in itself. The looming danger of Iran's nuclear programme means that we need the EU as a whole to adopt the sanctions that we have called for. It should impose a formal ban on export credit guarantees, mirror US financial sanctions and place unequivocal restrictions on investment in Iranian oil and gas.
	That brings me to the final and most important point that I wish to make. The Foreign Secretary talked briefly about one of the great challenges facing the world—climate change. We very much agree with him about that. Climate change is increasingly taking up the Foreign Office's allocation of personnel and resources. It is one of the great challenges facing the world, and I hope that at some stage we can have a debate—or get more information from the Government—about how the resources of the Foreign Office, which are now deployed quite heavily on the issue of climate change, are being used. We also need to know how the deployment of personnel working on climate change—for instance in Brazil—actively serves to influence other nations' climate change policies. This House must be able to make an assessment of that.
	However, alongside that vital priority, the Iranian situation reminds us that nuclear proliferation is the other great issue facing the entire world. It seems entirely possible that within the next decade the great danger posed to our national security by international terrorism will be overtaken in magnitude by the dangers of nuclear proliferation. As the Foreign Secretary rightly noted towards the close of his speech, the non-proliferation treaty, which is subject to an international review conference in 2010, is under assault from within, with its member states locked in recrimination and stalemate. It is also being assailed from without, by the actions of countries such as Iran and North Korea and by the sheer march forward of science, which is making it easier by the day to acquire and to peddle nuclear technology.

William Hague: I am a little worried to hear that the hon. Gentleman is in such agreement with me; that is a little disturbing. More seriously, we are at least able to differ on the issue that he raises. When one looks at the dangers of proliferation and of the Iranian nuclear programme, the basis for, and rationale behind, the plans that the United States put forward for missile defence can clearly be understood. The issue has to be seen in that context. That is why he has not heard words of condemnation on the matter from the Opposition. Before he and I fall out about anything else—we have agreed on so much—I will conclude with a point on non-proliferation.
	If we stand back from our daily preoccupations, from varying crises and from any party political issues, we see that non-proliferation is perhaps the most important subject of all in our international work, and it is an issue on which Britain can make a decisive difference. If the Government launch an initiative like the one that I mentioned, they will find solid and enthusiastic support across the House.

Kim Howells: I thank my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) for giving the House a real sense of the great sweep of problems that have to be confronted across the world. I will deal with a very small part of those problems, but an important part for our country, namely Afghanistan.
	We are entering a more difficult phase in our efforts to convince the British public that the cause of Afghanistan is worth the sacrifice of young lives. The public's perception of the Afghan war is changing. The huge media coverage earlier this year of the death of the 100th British serviceman in Afghanistan, and the death of the first servicewoman, pushed the war firmly into the limelight. The death of 128 of our brave young people in a war that has already lasted longer than the second world war raises increasingly difficult questions, most of which have been eclipsed until now by the ongoing controversies generated by the Iraq campaign.
	We should assume nothing about the impact of the Afghan war on the British public. One does not have to possess special powers to predict that, as the Afghan war grinds on, the people of our country will express concerns that we have heard little about to date. They will be generated by a whole range of worries, from President Karzai's habit of publicly maligning Britain's armed forces and aid agencies whenever he considers it necessary to grandstand before an Islamist audience, to the apparent ability of the Taliban and their allies to terrorise areas of Afghanistan that were considered Taliban-free not so long ago.
	One of the most corrosive elements in the conflict is Afghan corruption at institutional, provincial and personal level; it is that which threatens most seriously the future of the whole international effort. It is worth recalling that the aim of the effort, stated briefly, is to help that country to become an entity that resembles a normal state, capable of delivering the basic security and services required by most people in most states in the 21st century. If the true dimensions of the corruption are not recognised, Governments such as ours will continue to pour precious resources into Afghanistan and continue to cause the lives of soldiers and other brave, talented people to be sacrificed, with little to show for it when it comes to helping to create that desired normal state.
	The United Kingdom's strategy in Afghanistan is to effect a transition from international dependence to sustainable local ownership, but the character of those who are most likely to become the local owners of that sustainable independence is among the most pressing of Afghan problems. Institutionally, Afghanistan is corrupt from top to bottom, and there are few signs that the chaotic hegemony of warlords, gangsters, presidential placemen, incompetent and under-resourced provincial governors and self-serving Government Ministers has been challenged in any effective way by President Karzai. On the contrary, those individuals appear to be thriving, not least because Hamid Karzai has convinced himself that he cannot afford to sack or challenge the strongmen who, through corruption, brutality, power of arms or tribal status, are capable of controlling their territories and fiefdoms.
	President Karzai has been treated with kid gloves by most of the international community, perhaps because there does not appear to be a great queue of credible candidates to replace him. That is the wrong kind of love to lavish on President Karzai. He needs tough love, and that is precisely what he is not getting both in relation to the need to hit corruption and, as I shall argue, in relation to the need to extend dramatically the efforts to promote reconciliation—clearly, there has to be reconciliation if the war is not to drag on for a great many years to come.
	We will be asked, quite properly, why the lives of our service personnel should be risked if the Afghan Government are unwilling to tackle seriously the corruption, administrative indolence and incompetence of those charged with extending the remit of good governance in that country. We will be asked why we are fighting to preserve what looks remarkably like a regime that is being undermined by corrupt, self-serving cliques that have access to the very highest levels of Afghan politics.
	If those concerns promote a powerful lobby in this country for the abandonment of Britain's role in the current UN-led campaign to help the Afghans to create sustainable peace and democracy, there will be extremely serious consequences for the ordinary people of Afghanistan, because there have been achievements, and they are worth listing. They include democratic elections, significantly more females in education, more availability of health care, more paved roads, improvements to agricultural projects and—perhaps most importantly in the context of Britain's security—the denial to al-Qaeda, or AQ, of safe bases in Afghanistan for terrorist training and planning. Achieving the latter was, of course, the prime reason for us going there in the first place in the months following the terrorist carnage on 11 September 2001 in New York.
	The problem is that it is difficult to see how, militarily, al-Qaeda's protectors, the Taliban, can be excluded entirely from Afghanistan and prevented from terrorising and killing people, given the mountainous topography and the porous nature of the frontier with Pakistan. Even in 2008, there remain just over the border in Pakistan large refugee camps where the influence of the Taliban and other extremist Islamic groupings is powerful. These camps are full of young men without jobs or prospects, and they will remain for many years to come fertile recruiting grounds for Taliban fighting units and suicide squads.
	The training camps in Pakistan run by the likes of Lashkar-e-Taiba and their front organisation, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, have equipped and conveyed criminals to murder innocent people from Mumbai to London and from Kenya to Argentina. There is little chance that the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban and other Pakistani-based extremist groups will see their safe havens close to the Afghan-Pakistan border subjected in the near future to Pakistan Government control. The murder of 180 people in Mumbai is just one of the most recent of scores of obscenities. Quite properly in my opinion, fingers have been pointed at Lashkar-e-Taiba and their protectors in Pakistan. What is certain is that they have learned the lessons of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.
	In 2007 our ambassador to Kabul informed the world that it would take western forces 30 years to make Afghanistan a normal country. This prediction is at the more precise end of a spectrum of guesses—in America, for example, there are all manner of theories about how long it will take to put Afghanistan right, as Americans say. I am certain that our ambassador to Kabul knows as well as any of us that it is not tenable to assume that we can convince the British public of the case for a 30 years war in Afghanistan. I sense that he was talking about 30 years being the sort of perspective that the world needs to have when it comes to helping the Afghans to create sustainable peace in their country.
	We will not find it possible to convince the British public that we should continue fighting across even vaguer time scales, such as "for as long as it takes" or "for the long haul". We may use these overly convenient phrases, but they will not stand up to close questioning by anyone familiar with the reality of contemporary Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan and Iran.
	I have been reminded many times by military commanders in Afghanistan and by historians in this country that the Soviets had more than 150,000 well equipped service personnel in Afghanistan in the 1980s, engaged in killing Afghans without having to worry about infringing international standards of human rights, but that did not prevent their defeat by a relatively lightly armed Afghan resistance movement that used to its advantage not just the hostility of most of the population to the Soviet occupiers, whom they considered ruthless and godless, but the nature of the Afghan terrain and its close proximity to the safe havens afforded by Pakistan.
	The UN, ISAF, NATO and the US are not the Soviets. Almost certainly they are not loathed by most Afghans to the degree that they loathed the Soviets. Equally certainly, we must remember that the Afghans do not especially love us either. Understandably, given their experiences over the past 30 years, they equate outsiders with trouble, especially outsiders carrying guns. We assume that they prefer us to the Taliban and they most probably do, but our experience in other wars against guerrilla armies, especially in Northern Ireland, has taught us that it is almost impossible to erode completely the vital support that ordinary citizens are prepared to offer to those insurgents who reflect even small shreds of popularly held sentiment. It is obvious that there is no shortage of anti-foreign-occupier sentiment in Afghanistan.
	If we cannot win an outright military victory, how do we attain our desire to help to transform Afghanistan into something resembling a normal state, and for how long do we pursue that desire? Forget the nonsense about being prepared to fight on the mountains and plains of Afghanistan for the next 30 years. Once the reality of that claim sinks into the minds of the British public, it will be rejected as a dangerous and dismal fantasy. People will not accept the notion that British families should be prepared over the next decades to send their sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters to risk their lives fighting religious fanatics, tribal nationalists, corrupt warlords and heroin-traffickers in one of the most godforsaken terrains on the face of the earth. The notion is daft, however much we may try to rationalise it by arguing that it is better to fight al-Qaeda over there than over here.
	We know, tragically in my opinion, from the failure of our considerable efforts to persuade our NATO allies to shoulder a greater part of the war fighting burden in Afghanistan that their commitment to the campaign is limited, constrained as it is by the political realities back in their home countries. I was glad to hear my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary report that, these days, the French and the Germans are making more sympathetic noises about deploying forces and resources to Afghanistan. I saw no real signs of willingness among far too many of our NATO allies to take upon their shoulders a greater part of the burden of ensuring security in the dangerous south and east of Afghanistan.
	Those countries are flunking their duties as NATO members, for the Afghan campaign is a test of NATO's credibility. The Governments of NATO states cannot acknowledge that the nature of international conflict is changing—that it is generated less by the need to defend the borders of sovereign states and more by the need to combat terrorist groups that pay little heed to borders of any description—and not acknowledge at the same time that to counter-act those changes it is vital that all allies co-operate and share equally the dangers in conflicts like that in Afghanistan.
	There are ways of reducing the conflict to proportions that are manageable by the Afghans themselves, but they will involve greater emphasis than has been witnessed so far on promoting reconciliation among the factions, tribes and governments of that country. I have no doubt that the war-fighting will continue for some time to come. We can chase down and capture or kill the bad guys for the next 30 years, but that will not win for Afghanistan a sustainable peace and the chance of relative economic prosperity.
	There must be dialogue between the hostile factions. Images must be created of what life could be like for those fighters and their families who may be persuaded to lay down their arms and take up offers, perhaps, of accommodation, land to farm, seed to plant and stock to rear. They must be convinced that they will be safe and valued, the equal of all other Afghan citizens, not exploited by the corrupt, violent placemen of Kabul and the gangsters who control so much of the country.
	That means that President Karzai and the Afghan Parliament have to do two things. First, they must create a much stronger and more influential body to promote reconciliation than the largely ineffective national and independent peace and reconciliation committee that exists at the moment. They can do that. Secondly, they must convince the people that they will seek with much greater energy to do away with the scourge of institutional corruption, lawlessness and injustice. They must convince the millions of ordinary Afghans that peace will bring justice, fairness and prosperity and not more of the iniquity that they witness around them now.

Edward Davey: I was about to come to the points that the hon. Gentleman raises. Although there is the review being undertaken by General Petraeus, in which the Prime Minister says that Britain is now involved, the first priority of the Government and President Obama seems to be to increase our troops. We are not against that, and there is clearly a need for it, but it would be totally wrong if that were where the policy ended. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) has argued that we need to go beyond that and talk to parts of the Taliban that can be engaged with. We need to consider setting up a regional contact group to bring in countries around Afghanistan so that they can play a more constructive role. It is to those points that I now wish to turn.
	The truth is that a military solution will not work by itself; we all know that. The hon. Member for Pontypridd laid out all the reasons for that, and I would add a few more. The idea that NATO forces could stay there for 30 years is nonsense, not only because there would be no public support for it, but because the Afghans would not want it. Unfortunately, the popularity of the NATO forces is reducing as months go by, and the history of Afghanistan shows that if there are foreign troops on its soil, there will be a nationalistic urge to reject them. We should understand that, not least because of the three Anglo-Afghan wars in the 19th century.
	The only other way for the international community to support law and order and to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan is to support the Afghan army and the Afghan police, something on which the Foreign Secretary focused. That is being done, and we welcome the Government's moves in that area, but how will the long-term costs of that process be managed? The cost of the Afghan army and police at full strength, as anticipated by the Americans, would be more than $2.5 billion a year. That would take up all of the Afghan Government's budget at the moment—indeed, more than that. Even given optimistic assumptions about Afghan growth and how much would flow into the exchequer in Kabul, many estimate that the Afghan Government would not be able to afford the cost of their own army and police force, even in 10 years' time. The army and the police would eat up all the resources available to the Afghan Government.
	We are left with the international community shouldering the burden—but how sustainable is that in the long term? Can we really expect the Afghan people to have real faith in the credibility and legitimacy of the Afghan army and police if they are funded by the international community for ever? That is not sustainable, so we have to look at other ways of reducing and ending this conflict, which means talking to different people on the other side, and considering a diplomatic solution in that region. I shall explain why that is critical to the future of our deployment in Afghanistan.
	Many people in the Pakistan establishment, particularly the intelligence services, feel that the deployment in Afghanistan is a threat to Pakistan. They may be wrong about that—I think that they are wrong—but that is what they believe. The history of the thinking of Pakistan's intelligence services shows that they have long been paranoid about India. Pakistan's forces are deployed and structured to fight a war against an Indian invasion, and it sees many of the developments with US and NATO forces in Afghanistan as some sort of coalition with India. Although no one will necessarily publicly state that, there is quite a lot of evidence and academic work suggesting that it is the case. Unless we engage with those in the Pakistan leadership and say, "We're on your side. You're part of the regional contact group that will take some of the decisions on the way forward, and we will bring you in along with China, Russia and Iran", and deal with their fears and suspicions to ensure that Pakistan is part of the decision-making process, which it clearly is not at the moment, we will not get a stable framework that will enable us to build peace over time without massive deployment of our troops or massive subsidy of Afghan troops. That is the only way forward in Afghanistan.
	Both the Foreign Secretary and the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks talked about Iran at length—rightly, because it must be at the top of the list of other foreign policy challenges, and I agree with what much of what was said. The new President of the United States is committed to much greater engagement and wants to talk to the authorities in Tehran, and that should be welcomed. It raises the question of how we tweak our existing sanctions policy if we are to embark on thorough engagement. We have long supported the sanctions regime, which has cross-party support, and we are concerned about other EU countries that do not back it. Italy, Greece and France seem to export an awful lot to Iran and I am concerned by trade figures, which show that Austria, Belgium and Germany are fast increasing their exports to Iran. Like the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks, we condemn those EU countries for not playing their part in the sanctions.

Kim Howells: The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting speech. Is he as worried as me about the export from a country such as Austria of specialist steels, which are manufactured in few other counties in the world, but are useful to the nuclear enrichment programme in Iran?

Edward Davey: I agree. I was in Israel recently and asked for a special briefing from the relevant people in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about their concerns, and the issue that the hon. Gentleman mentioned was one. They named a specific company about which they were concerned.
	However, if we have a United States President who wants to engage with Tehran, what do we do about sanctions? First, are they working? Even if we had full EU support, much trade from China and Russia goes to Iran, and much of Iran's support comes from those two countries. Secondly, I understand that the financial sanctions that we have discussed are widely dismissed in Tehran, partly because Iran sees the banking collapse in America and Europe and is pleased not to be part of that banking community and to have avoided suffering because of it. Iran feels that the sanctions slightly insulated it. We must consider whether we can make the sanctions better but also whether they are effective. If President Obama and his team intend genuinely to engage with the mullahs, how do we play the carrot-and-stick negotiations? How will he persuade them if he wants to increase sanctions? I put that as a debating point. If there is to be a change of approach in Washington, we may to need to think about our position, too.
	Concluding peace negotiations in the middle east will have massive ramifications, whether in Afghanistan, Iran or Pakistan. We all know the global implications—the global prize—of successfully concluding those negotiations. When I visited Israel recently, I also talked to Dr. Fayyad of the Palestinian Authority and his deputy Foreign Minister, Dr. Soboh, and heard their views of the peace negotiations. I was pleasantly surprised.
	Both the Israelis and the Palestinians were incredibly optimistic about the current state of the negotiations. They said the same thing at different meetings, which I found reassuring. They have several messages to convey. First, they do not want outside interference in the bilateral negotiations, which are going well and are substantial. They ask for the space and time to conclude them. Secondly, they need the Arab countries to be more supportive of the Palestinian Authority and their attempts to conclude the peace negotiations—the Foreign Secretary said some good things about that recently. Sometimes, the Arab countries sit on the fence, some of them tacitly supporting Hamas and the extremist Palestinians. Frankly, that is not good enough. We now have an historic opportunity, but as the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks said, if we do not seize it, it might pass into history. We join the Foreign Secretary in calling on Arab countries to put their shoulders to the wheel and publicly play their part, by backing the negotiations and backing what the Palestinian Authority are trying to do.
	People need to understand more widely why there have not been more reports about the progress of the peace talks. The reason is that one of the key parameters that was agreed by both sides early on is that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. That parameter means that progress reports cannot be issued, because no interim conclusions will be reached until the final conclusion is reached.
	I would like also to mention the remarks that the Foreign Secretary made in response to my comments about settlements, which are critical to moving the process forward. I pay tribute to the Israeli Government and in particular the Israel defence forces on removing the settlers from the so-called house of peace in Hebron last week. When I visited Hebron, I stood just 20 or 30 yd from that so-called house of peace and saw the intimidation to which the Jewish settlers there were subjecting the Palestinian community. I saw a little Palestinian boy who claimed to have had his arm broken in a scuffle with the settlers. I saw the desecration of Muslim graves, which had been perpetrated by the Jewish settlers there. It was therefore good to see the IDF standing up to that intimidation and violence, and upholding the rule of law in Israel. That was an important development, because if we are to reach a final settlement, quite a number of settlers will have to be removed from their settlements in the currently occupied Palestinian territories.

Edward Davey: I am glad that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has given me the opportunity to clarify that I do not believe that the doctrine is a hindrance to the negotiations. Rather, it is a hindrance to public support for the process and for the Palestinian Authority in particular. The problem now is that the Palestinian Authority are not being seen by the Palestinian people to be delivering very much. Indeed, the agreement at Annapolis on settlements has not been fulfilled by the Israelis. There was supposed to be a freeze on settlements, but they have in fact increased massively.
	My point is that the good things that are happening cannot be reported because of that discipline. It is the right discipline for the negotiations, but more pressure should be put on the Israeli Government to meet their obligations to put a freeze on the settlements, which are causing massive problems for the Palestinian Authority and their credibility. Indeed, Dr. Fayyad was pretty clear on that point, but when one puts it to the Israelis, they say, "Well, it's keeping the coalition going in Parliament." Colleagues in other parties in the House may be surprised to know that the Liberal Democrats do not support Israel's form of proportional representation.
	Let me briefly touch on the Syrian track. It has not really featured in this debate, but it is crucial and welcome. If we can get serious negotiations under way between Israel and Syria to sort out, for instance, Hezbollah or the Golan heights, that will have massive implications for the policy towards Iran. Decoupling Syria from Iran and closing down the funds and armaments going to Hezbollah could have a very important catalytic effect.
	I will not go through all the countries that others have mentioned, because I want to allow other hon. Members to speak, but I want discuss to Sudan and Darfur, which have been mentioned briefly. Earlier this year, I asked the Foreign Secretary about helicopters to the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur:
	"what is the British Government doing to ensure that UNAMID has the 24 helicopters that it was promised?"
	In reply, he said:
	"It is a complex matter, but I strongly share the hon. Gentleman's sense of urgency about the situation, and I acknowledge the need to ensure that countries with forces at their disposal send them to the areas where they are most needed."—[ Official Report, 8 January 2008; Vol. 470, c. 153.]
	It is my understanding that we have still not managed to send any extra helicopters to the UNAMID mission, apart from five helicopters that Ethiopia provided. We understand that the Ukrainians are in talks about sending helicopters, but that Britain, the EU and NATO have failed to supply the helicopters needed by the UNAMID mission in Darfur. That is a disgrace. The resolution that went through the United Nations Security Council in July 2007—resolution 1769—was the precursor to the planning for UNAMID but, more than a year and a half later, we have still not provided the basic equipment to allow UNAMID to do its job in Darfur. That is a disgrace.
	As the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks said, there is a great deal of agreement on these issues, but the Government also need to recognise where they have gone wrong in recent years on Iraq and on their relations with the European Union. Until they do that, they will not be as well placed as they need to be to influence the new President and to ensure that Britain punches above its weight in the world.

Derek Twigg: I wish to make most of my remarks on Afghanistan, but I must first say that I have been privileged to work with our outstanding armed forces, their families and the veterans in my two years as a Defence Minister. They are the best armed forces in the world and their courage is tremendous. That was typified in the regular visits that I made to Selly Oak and Headley Court to see our wounded service personnel, who displayed great stoicism in the face of severe battlefield wounds and injuries. Their families also give them great support. I wish to place on record my appreciation and admiration of their amazing courage. One of the great successes recently has been Defence Medical Services, which has saved lives and limbs that might not have been saved in the past. Its work extends from the battlefield medics in Iraq and Afghanistan to the amazing hospital at Selly Oak, the rehabilitation centre at Headley Court and facilities elsewhere.
	I genuinely believe that in the past few years we have seen improvements in our armed forces' equipment and in the welfare support that they, their families and veterans have been given, too. I know that because that is what they tell me. Of course, there is always more to do, but if we listened to the press, we would think that nothing had been done for years when in fact significant improvements have been made.
	Before I talk about Afghanistan, I want briefly to refer to Iraq. I know from talking to our service personnel there that they often feel that they are somewhat ignored because of what has gone on in Afghanistan as well as because of the intended draw-down from Iraq. I was last in Iraq in August and went to visit the MITTs—the military transition teams—that provide mentoring and training and are embedded in the middle of Basra. I saw a number of their teams. Our service personnel were working there in over 50° heat and were doing quite an amazing job in training and mentoring the Iraqi forces.
	The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) said that the troops were all stuck in Basra air station. That might have been the case in March, before Operation Charge of the Knights, but when I went in August there was a great sense of achievement and that something practical had been done to bring about improvements. There was a massive improvement between Operation Charge of the Knights in March and my last visit in August. Everyone can see the turnaround and improvements that have taken place, particularly with the Iraqi army. There is still more work to be done with the Iraqi police, but even now great work is being done. Commerce and trade are returning and so on.
	We will not know, of course, for a number of years how successful we have been in Iraq, but I believe that Iraq will prove to be a success. Lots of people want to rush to rash judgments now, but history will bear out our achievements, not least those of our armed forces.
	I want specifically to major on the subject of Afghanistan because I am increasingly concerned about the amount of commentary that seems to be questioning our role there and whether we should be in the country. Some commentators are calling for us to leave, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells) pointed out earlier, I believe that would be a disaster. Support among British people in the opinion polls seems quite low, too, and we have a responsibility to argue the case for why we are there and about the national and international importance of our presence.
	It is always worth repeating the importance of our presence to support the democratically elected Government in Afghanistan and the construction that needs to take place not only to support that democracy but to bring about improvements for ordinary Afghan people. Not only do we need to prevent it from being a safe haven for al-Qaeda and for terrorism in general, but we need to deal with the issue of drugs.
	On drugs, I do not think that eradication, in itself, is the solution. I believe that we can provide people in Afghanistan with alternative livings, but the problem then is whether they can get their goods to market. The corruption in the country means that they have bits taken from them at every stage along the line on way to the market. When I went to Afghanistan, the Afghans told me that they could grow alternative crops instead of poppies, but that getting those crops to market to sell them is a big issue for them. That is where security comes into play, which I shall talk about a little more later.
	There is no doubt, as my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd made clear, that the country is riddled with corruption. The problem is historic. It did not just arise with the election of a democratic Government—it is part of that society. When democratically elected representatives and the governors participate in that corruption, that is a scandal. It has a corrosive effect that can undermine the whole purpose of why we are in Afghanistan and the work that is being done there.
	It is right to concentrate on the fact that we have a democratic Government in Afghanistan, which is a major step forward, for all its warts. We must support that. We must reiterate to the British people why we are in Afghanistan, why we support the democratically elected Government and why it is important to Britain for us to be there. We need to keep doing that, and we clearly have not been communicating that as well as we could.
	I think everyone accepts—it amazes me when commentators mention it—that there is not a military solution. I have not heard anyone from the Government or from any other Government say that there is such a solution, and it is beyond me why commentators keep repeating that assertion. It is a given that there is no military solution and that the solution has to be that the democratic Government, civilian authorities and organisations and all parts of governance come together to support the construction of Afghanistan.
	I also want to refer to our NATO allies. In my two years in the job, I was frustrated by the lack of support from some of those allies and their behaviour in terms of providing fighting troops, helicopters and support, given what we are doing and the fact that we are losing lives on a regular basis. Great frustration has been expressed in the House about our allies on a number of occasions, but the fact is that we must pile on the pressure to ensure that our allies do more. If NATO or the UN are serious about achieving things in countries like Afghanistan, they must make sacrifices and provide their share of support. I believe strongly that that is the only way that we can achieve things for the good of the world generally.
	I turn now to the question of governance, which I think is another misnomer. The perception in some quarters is that we will be able to build local government and judicial systems like the ones that we have in the UK. That is not going to happen in Afghanistan—at least not for many years, or in my lifetime. The Afghan people have a traditional way of doing things, and we must tailor the system of governance that we develop to that.
	For instance, the governance system that we develop might be based around each provincial governor, and the judicial system that we construct might reflect the demands of people in the different areas, but what is certain is that we will not end up with the same system that we in Great Britain or the western world have. However, the types of judicial and governance systems that we deliver must enjoy the confidence of the Afghan people. Our job is to work with them to achieve that, but I do not believe that we can build a western-style system. Quite frankly, that is not achievable.
	There have been many achievements in Afghanistan that often get overlooked, and No. 1 among them is the provincial reconstruction teams. I first went out to Afghanistan in February 2007: I thought then that the collaboration between the Government and senior staff was not very good, and I made my concerns known in the right quarters. However, there had been a major improvement when I last visited in August.
	I visited 16th Air Assault Brigade, and met Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, and found that the way that they had embedded in the PRT team was a major step forward. At last, I got a real sense of things progressing and of people working together. I am not claiming that things are now perfect, that there are no problems and that further improvements are not needed, but it was clear that there had been a major change in the time since my first visit.
	Also, people in Afghanistan now have much greater access to health care. I visited a hospital in Lashkagar that was just awful, but there have been improvements in people's access to health care, especially in the district centres. More children—including girls—are going to school, but that is still a battle in many cases. We all know what the Taliban do when they find out about such things.
	In addition, I went to see some very important reconstruction projects in Lashkagar—another example of what is happening in Afghanistan now. Nothing is going to change things overnight but gradual progress is being made, despite the many challenges that we face in the country.
	The key issue, of course, is security. The Afghans to whom I spoke said that security was their No. 1 priority. We have to do a lot of hard work to achieve it, and we cannot do that by ourselves. Our goal is to get the people in the Afghan army and police trained up so that they can work effectively to provide that security themselves. We are moving in the right direction, although quicker progress is being made with the army. I spoke to our service personnel who are working with the Afghan army, and they had much more praise for its capability, effectiveness and numbers than was the case 18 months or two years previously.
	Sadly, corruption and a lack of ability remain major problems with the Afghan police. Even getting officers to stay at their posts is difficult, and it is clear that much more work needs to be done, as security will be very important in the future elections. It is essential that elections are held and that we can get people out to vote in them. That is a big task, and security is an important element that we have to get right.
	Some people say that we could be in Afghanistan for 30 years, but I do not think that that is sustainable. In fact, if we have to keep up the present level of fighting for 30 years, we will have failed. We have to be realistic: we must look at what is achievable, and that brings us back to getting the Afghan people themselves to provide security and to putting in place all the elements of governance that will deliver it. We must also get all the members of NATO to play their part in that regard.
	I do not want to repeat much of what has been said about Pakistan, but the country has always been key to the history of Afghanistan, as is shown by the events of the three Afghan wars. Interestingly, some commentators say that Britain got kicked out after those wars, but that is not entirely true. Russia was also kicked out, but the present situation is different. The Taliban have only minority support in Afghanistan, and the vast majority of people are opposed to them. That is the difference, and the key for us is to win and keep people's confidence. In that way, we can ensure that they will support us in the job that we are doing, and not turn against us and give their support to the Taliban. That is a key priority for us.
	Pakistan, too, is a very important area. Its Government have to do more about the borders and the tribal areas. I know that they are working on that, and a lot of time and effort is being spent on the issue, as we heard from the Foreign Secretary. It is a key area for us, and if things went wrong there, it would be a major problem.
	I want to discuss Iran in the context of Afghanistan. We have heard a lot about Iran in the context of Iraq—about Iran supplying weapons and its involvement with the insurgents there—but it is also involved in the supply of weapons, or elements of weapons, such as improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan. Of course, we must maintain diplomatic relations and work at the diplomatic channels, but sometimes we are far too soft with Iran and should take a much stronger line. We have to work very hard on that, because Iran would have an influence in Afghanistan. There is work to be done in that respect.
	Finally, our previous Prime Minister, Tony Blair, made an important, landmark speech almost two years ago on HMS Albion. He asked what sort of defence force our country wanted. He asked whether we wanted a defence force that could deliver hard power in the support of soft power globally—we live in a global world and are affected by what happens globally—or a home defence force that never came out unless we felt that our shores were threatened. The use of soft and hard power is key. We still need to debate that, and Tony Blair set out the parameters for such a debate in his very important speech. I strongly support what he said in it.
	I finish on an important point: it is essential that we retain the support of the British people for what we are doing in missions such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have to get across why we are there, and the importance of the mission. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Des Browne), the former Secretary of State for Defence, said that we need to hear Afghan voices saying why it is important for Britain and NATO to be there, and we need to say why it is in our national interests to be there. We have to work much harder on that, and on getting across to the British people why support for Afghanistan is so important to our future security and to the rest of the world.

Michael Ancram: I was interested to hear what the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) had to say about Afghanistan, because like the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells), he had ministerial experience of the issue. Obviously, it is well worth our learning from that experience.
	The number of times that Afghanistan has been mentioned in the debate underlines the need to have a dedicated debate on that country in this Chamber, in which we could dedicate the whole of our remarks to the real problems there. I should like to say how very strongly I supported the speech by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind). He has shown us a lead that I hope our party and the Government will follow. As he knows, the only point on which I disagree with him is that I do not think that we can play a leadership role—the role that I would like to see the British Government, and people such as him, play—in moving towards multinational disarmament while committing ourselves to renewing our Trident deterrent, not now but in 20 years' time. That gives the wrong message. As my right hon. and learned Friend knows—we have debated the matter before in the Chamber—that is why I voted as I did in the debate on the renewal of Trident.
	I want to talk about the fundamental shift that has taken place in the world in the past 10 years, and the way in which we need to reflect that in a substantial change in direction in foreign policy. When the cold war ended, the days of the big blocs disappeared. They were largely replaced by a unipolar world in which America had effective supremacy and dominance. It was the greatest military power that the world has ever seen, in relative terms. For 10 years, it exercised that power and, largely, we supported it in exercising it.
	The world has moved on. In the past 10 years we have seen a network world come to the fore, with the emergence of China, the re-emergence of Russia, the building of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, and the emergence of Brazil in South America. It is a world in which hard power will have far less of a role to play, and soft power will become more and more important. In a network world, one cannot get one's way by confrontation. The nature of a network world means that one has to get one's way through persuasion and engagement. In the past five years, one of the failures of American foreign policy—and, I have to say, our foreign policy, as ours was so closely attached to it—was that we thought we could continue to exercise the sort of confrontational, isolationist policy that was so much part of the previous five years. We did not realise the effect that that would have.
	If one looks at the region where I spend some time, the middle east, one sees the most extraordinary results of that policy of confrontation and isolation. One sees Syria being pushed closely into the arms of Iran, which the Syrians did not want. I saw the Syrian Foreign Minister two and a half years ago. His first question to me was, "Are you an isolator or an engager?" They wanted to engage with us but we were effectively shutting the door on them. If one shuts the door on someone on one side, they will walk out of the door on the other side. They did, and they got closer and closer to Iran.
	I have seen even more unusual relationships created, with Sunni Hamas now effectively in combination with Shi'a Iran, which in the Islamic world is almost unthinkable, yet our isolation of Hamas, particularly after it won the election in 2006 in the Palestinian Authority, has forced it in that direction.
	Today I want to look at the opportunity that I believe will arise with the catalyst of the election of President Obama when, without losing face, the west, America and Britain can begin to change the emphasis. The change of emphasis must be, as I say, from confrontation to engagement. I shall examine various aspects of that. We have spoken a great deal today about Iran and I shall not get involved in the arguments about how best we prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. I take the view that we may, in the end, not be able to do that, and we should equally be looking at how, through engagement, we can create a doctrine that will manage an increasing nuclear region.
	It is certain that isolating Iran has not stopped it moving forward towards obtaining a nuclear weapon. It has turned from the door that we closed in the west of Iran and opened the door in the east, so that for all their protestations in the Security Council, China and Russia are still trading with and have close relationships with Iran.
	I spend some time in the Gulf. There is another implication of the policy that we were pursuing. We were saying to our friends in the Gulf, "We hope you will join us in trying to create these restraints on Iran." The Foreign Minister of one Gulf country said to me, "Hold on. It's all very well for you to say that, but you and the Americans are here today. You won't be here tomorrow or the day after, but Iran will always be there. If you expect us to take an antagonistic view of Iran and isolate it as you are trying to do, you are asking us to operate against our own interests."
	There is every reason why we should support President Obama's initiative to reopen dialogue with Iran and, to use the words of the Foreign Secretary, use diplomacy to try and achieve the purpose that we want to achieve in Iran, and move away from the stick that has been waved, largely by the Americans and occasionally by us, which has ultimately operated against our interests and has had no effect on Iran at all.
	The second area that I shall touch on is Afghanistan. Last year, in the equivalent debate, I described what we were doing in Afghanistan as pushing water uphill. I have tremendous respect for our armed forces. I think they are the best in the world and I have seen the enormous achievements that they have made in Afghanistan, but when one looks at what they are doing, every achievement that they make will be sustained only if they stay there. As we know, they are not going to stay there for ever, and when they leave, those achievements can be undone. One can push water uphill, but the moment one turns one's back on it, it comes running down again.
	I hope that in the review that is taking place in the United States Administration about what needs to be done now in Afghanistan, we will look closely at what we are asking our armed forces to do. I well remember two and a half years ago the then Defence Secretary telling us on behalf of the Government as we were about to deploy to Helmand that he hoped that not a shot would be fired. When we look back at that and at what has happened since then, how badly we misjudged what we were getting into in that area of Afghanistan and how much we have asked of our troops, including the sacrifice of many of them in the process. Even if the Americans deploy more troops in Afghanistan, we must consider very carefully whether we should be doing the same thing.
	Secondly, we should consider where we see our priorities within Afghanistan. When we went into the country just after the twin towers were brought down on 9/11, we had one major objective—to capture Kabul, because it was the centre of power within Afghanistan and because if we held Kabul, or a benign Afghan Government did, a reasonable degree of control could be exercised over the whole country; I do not believe that complete control could ever be exercised there. We took and held Kabul, and when I went there as shadow Foreign Secretary and shadow Defence Secretary, the British were very much engaged in providing security in the city.
	When I originally went to Kabul, I was able to walk the streets; I went into bookshops and went shopping. The last time I went there I was in an armoured car all the time, wearing body armour. We have taken our eye off the ball. We should look again at securing Kabul and making it safe again, and then, if we have the opportunity, moving out bit by bit, through a hearts and minds exercise. That would provide the best chance of a reasonably and relatively secure Afghanistan in future. I hope that that point will be closely considered in the review—not only by us, but by the Americans. I talked about engagement, so I will say one more thing about this issue. I agree with those who say that at some moment we have to talk to the Taliban. The Taliban are not a uniform organisation; there is a whole province right in the centre of Afghanistan which is largely Taliban, and there cannot be an Afghanistan in the future that does not recognise that reality. At some moment, we have to start engaging the Taliban, and I hope that that will also be part of the review.
	The last issue that I want to discuss is that of Israel-Palestine. I was pleased that the Queen's Speech talked about a comprehensive settlement, because I do not believe that a deal on the two-state solution can be done only between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. That is for a good reason: part of that solution involves the creation of a secure Israel—and that depends not only on the Palestinians, but on the Lebanese and on the other Arab countries in the area. The settlement has to be comprehensive and include Syria as a key partner if the security needed by Israel as part of the settlement is to be provided.
	It is absolutely right that, within the argument about the Israel-Palestine settlement, we begin to engage the countries in the region such as Saudi Arabia, which some years ago put forward a plan that I hope will now be adopted, and Syria. That should also include the elements within the Palestinian Authority which will have to be part of an ultimate settlement. We cannot have a viable Palestinian state that does not, to some degree, recognise the influence and existence of Hamas. At the last election, Hamas secured more than half the votes of the people in the Palestinian state. The idea that one can do a deal with Fatah and hope that it will last is fanciful.
	We should be pushing the concept of a new body representative of all the Palestinians—not just Hamas and Fatah, but the prisoners and the people in the refugee camps. That body could negotiate with Israel, giving Israel the knowledge that if it comes to a settlement, that will include the whole Palestinian people and not just a faction of them. That means talking to people with whom we do not talk at the moment. It means talking to Hamas in the Palestinian Authority and to Hezbollah in Lebanon, because in the end it will be part of the necessary agreement to secure Israel's northern border. Those parties are willing to talk, and I hope that our Government will begin to look closely at the need to engage them.
	I learned in Northern Ireland that moving towards achieving a settlement can happen only if all those who will have to be part of it are included. We went through a very difficult few years in Northern Ireland. We began the dialogue with Sinn Fein-IRA, and it was very uncomfortable. However, we knew that if in the end we could not bring them in some form into the arrangement that we hoped would secure the future of Northern Ireland—and we hope that it has—we would be back where we had been not only for the previous 30 years, but for the previous 300. We can apply that lesson in other areas such as the middle east and Afghanistan. I hope that that is in the minds of the Government when they talk about a comprehensive peace settlement.

Kate Hoey: It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), with whom I have worked closely on one of the issues that I want to raise. During this debate it has been very good to see so much cross-party agreement, with Government and Opposition, and the two Opposition parties, agreeing on many things.
	I will dwell for a minute on an issue that has not been raised—the growing power of China and our failure to make enough use of the Beijing Olympics to put pressure on China over Tibet. In view of the statement by the Foreign Secretary on 29 October, one could argue that our Government's policy on Tibet had not changed, but we did not use that opportunity to clarify our policy. We missed a chance to impress on the Chinese Government some of the commitments for which we should have asked, such as that they undertake seriously to further the talks with envoys from the Dalai Lama, allow an independent delegation to visit Tibet to see what the conditions are in reality, allow full access by the foreign media to Tibet, stop the increased re-education of monks, and re-evaluate education in Tibet to bring in bilingual policies. Collectively, we will share the blame when things go very wrong in Tibet. We have allowed China, because of the nature of that country, to get away with some of the most appalling human rights abuses, yet at the same time to glory in the Olympics.
	I want to deal with the situation in Zimbabwe. Over the past few weeks, the outbreak of cholera has brought that country into focus again. Zimbabwe is one of those subjects where there is a lot of publicity and noise, then for a while it goes quiet again. All that time it is if things are happening, but we know that all that has happened is that the situation has got much worse for its people. Over the past few weeks, Mugabe's agents have abducted members of the Movement for Democratic Change and representatives of civil society—people are disappearing day in, day out. I was talking to some people in Harare yesterday and in Bulawayo the day before, and I learned that the situation has become even more dire, with the breakdown of sanitation and water facilities. Now that the rains are beginning, raw sewage is getting right into the wells that people use for drinking and washing. We are facing a huge crisis there.
	Despite that, some people in the Southern African Development Community countries are still putting faith in dialogue and a power-sharing deal. I believe that the MDC signed up to that deal in good faith. Let us not forget that the opposition in Zimbabwe has not resorted to violence. We are sending out a terribly bad signal to the world—that one cannot bring about the end of a dictator by peaceful means. Although the opposition in Zimbabwe have used peaceful means, the international community has not come to their aid, and Mugabe is being allowed to stay on as President and carry on with business as usual.
	Some strong comments have been made in the past week or two, particularly in the past few days. On Monday, President Sarkozy of France, who is EU President, said:
	"There comes a time when a dictator does not want to hear, does not want to understand, and so my understanding is that heads of state and governments must end discussions."
	I hope that he speaks for the rest of the European Union. Many of the southern African countries have continued to make their high-flown statements on democracy and human rights, to which they subscribe as members of SADC, the African Union and the Commonwealth, but their actions fall woefully short of what should be expected after those declarations. In general, the silence of many of those countries has been shameful.
	At the weekend, the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, made a bold call for Mugabe and his henchmen to be removed from power in Zimbabwe and brought before the International Criminal Court in the Hague to answer for their crimes against humanity. Last week, his brother archbishop, Desmond Tutu, also called for the Mugabe Government to step down or face indictment for their gross violations of human rights, and he said that if they refused they should be removed by use of military force. He did not go on to say what form of military force should be used, but he meant what many of us feel: in the end there will have to be some form of United Nations intervention. Both of those archbishops know what they are talking about because they were central to the struggle against tyranny in their home countries of Uganda and South Africa.

Kate Hoey: I will not give way because there are a number of things that I want to put on the record. In the past couple of weeks, it has been encouraging to see the new designations announced by the United States Department of the Treasury, which impose financial sanctions on and make it an offence to do business with four people whom the American Government have called cronies of Zimbabwe's Mugabe. The support of those four people is allegedly allowing Mugabe to undermine democracy, and any bank accounts or other financial assets belonging to them that are found in the United States must be frozen. In addition, Americans are forbidden from conducting business with them.
	It is useful to name those individuals again. Nalinee Joy Taveesin is a Thai business woman who is said to have facilitated a number of financial real estate and gem-related transactions on behalf of Mugabe's wife, Grace. Ironically, Nalinee Joy Taveesin has participated in several initiatives on corruption and growth challenges in Africa and south-east Asia while secretly supporting the kleptocratic practices of one of Africa's most corrupt regimes, as the Treasury department has said. Another of those four people is Mahmood Kechik, a Malaysian urologist. He was described as being one of Mugabe's physicians and business advisers who dealt secretly with the defence forces commander and Zimbabwe's central bank governor, Gideon Gono, and others to enrich themselves and the Government illegally.
	John Bredenkamp is a Zimbabwean businessman and ex-rugby captain who reputedly made his fortune smuggling tobacco and weapons for the former white Rhodesian Government. He is described by the US Treasury office as being someone who has clearly been financing himself from the smuggling that he has been doing. Billy Rautenback is a Zimbabwean businessman said by the US Treasury to be close to the Mugabe Government. He has provided logistical support for large-scale mining projects in Zimbabwe that benefit a small number of corrupt senior officials. I should have added that it is alleged that John Bredenkamp is—or has been—living in this country regularly. I hope that the Government are looking into that because we cannot allow such people to be here and we should not be dealing with them in any way whatsoever. We have also discovered that the World Food Programme is using one of Billy Rautenback's companies to transport some of the food it sends into Zimbabwe. That needs to be looked into.
	I hope that our Government will ensure that we do all we can to carry out the same sort of policy in respect of those individuals. There is no easy way to make change happen in Zimbabwe, but we as a Government must continue to do every little thing that we can to tighten the screw on Mugabe, and there are things that we can do. I am pleased that the European Union has increased the sanctions and added to the list of individuals involved, but there are still far too many people who can get their money out of Zimbabwe and into other countries.
	The Foreign Office has been extremely good in pushing the Home Office to allow those Zimbabweans who could in no circumstances return to that country to remain here. Many are well educated and should be allowed to work in this country while they are unable to return. I hope that the Foreign Office has a little more influence on the Home Office than the many colleagues in the House who have been trying to get the position changed for some time.
	Finally, it is time for us to stop trying to be nice to those other African countries that continue to recognise, talk to and support Mugabe. If they do not do what they should do, we should ensure that we punish them, too.

Robert Walter: I thank my hon. Friend for his support of the Iranian Government's decision.
	I want to speak briefly about Africa, although not about Zimbabwe, on which the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) spoke passionately, but about the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad and Somalia, in the context of the European Union missions that have been deployed there in recent months and European security and defence policy generally. I want then to talk about the situation between Georgia and Russia.
	I intervened on the Foreign Secretary earlier, because I am concerned about what appears to be a lack of deployment of support for the United Nations force in the Congo. There are plenty of precedents for European Union deployments in the Congo. Some years ago there was the Artemis mission and two years ago there was a fairly successful EUFOR mission to Kinshasa, which I visited. The question of who is answerable to whom was answered in that deployment. During my visit, I was involved in a meeting about security matters in Kinshasa in which the EU force commander, the force commander of MONUC—the United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—the EU special representative and the United Nations special representative all participated.
	My concern, which I raised with the Foreign Secretary, is that in the past two years the European Union has agreed to deploy eight battlegroups, but we have never deployed any of them. Two are on call now—one is a British battlegroup and the other is a German-led battlegroup—and they amount to some 3,000 troops on call, deployable at 15 days' notice. The Foreign Secretary was in the eastern Congo on 1 and 2 November with the French Foreign Minister, Mr. Kouchner, who holds the presidency of the European Union. If the decision had been taken to provide that short-term assistance to the MONUC forces, those troops could have been deployed in 15 days and the situation would have been alleviated. They can be deployed only on a short-term basis, and the requirement is only a short-term requirement. If we are to have these battlegroups, and if they are to be on call, surely they should be available for short-term, dire humanitarian situations, such as that in the Congo, where some form of peace enforcement is required. If they are not to be used in such situations, what are they to be used for? They are beginning to become simply a paper commitment rather than a real commitment to any form of peacekeeping, and I would like to see that point seriously addressed.
	We can deploy under the EU flag. We have a very successful mission in Chad at the present time, which is protecting refugees from the Darfur conflict. It is there under a UN mandate, and will hand over to an African Union force under UN command in March next year. Interestingly—or perhaps ironically, given the Irish referendum debate—it is led by an Irish commander. General Patrick Nash is the operational commander of the mission, and one of the companies deployed in that force is a company of Irish soldiers.
	That demonstrates that, under the European security and defence policy, what is described in Ireland as the triple lock really works. Such a force would deploy only with the UN mandate, and with the approval of the Irish Government and the Irish Parliament. That fits in with the kind of peace enforcement or peacekeeping role that the ESDP was designed for, and with the intergovernmental nature of the ESDP. It does not, as was suggested during the Irish referendum debate, involve a European army. It is an intergovernmental force or, if you like, a coalition of the willing.
	There is a similar arrangement at the moment off the coast of Somalia, where the EU naval force is deployed. The United Kingdom is the framework nation for that force, and the mission is commanded from Northwood in London. My real concern is about duplication, however. What appear to be three international naval forces are now deployed off the coast of Somalia to combat piracy. We have the original CTF-150 force, which has engaged with the pirates; we have the NATO force, which has been there for some time; and we now have an EU force. That arrangement involves ships that are from basically the same nations but which are operating under different command structures. We still do not have enough ships, but I am not sure that duplication into three different commands will solve the problem of piracy in the long run. We really need some joined-up government.
	I should like to reflect on the Georgia-Russia situation, which has already been mentioned. In the past month or so, I have visited Tblisi and Moscow, where I had discussions about the situation. In the wake of what happened at the beginning of August, the actions of President Sarkozy in the name of the European Union were commendable. He achieved some success, but I seriously question whether any other nation holding the EU presidency would have had the same success. I believe that President Medvedev and Mr. Putin were prepared to meet President Sarkozy because he was the President of France, which is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. I am not sure—I say this with all due deference to the smaller member states of the European Union—that other presidencies would have had the same success. I am thus very concerned about lulling ourselves into a false sense of security, thinking that we can use the EU in such an initiative. If we had been premature, as the Georgians would have liked us to have been, in advancing Georgia's NATO membership—I support it in the long term—and if an article 5 response under the NATO treaty had been made, I am concerned that we would have been looking at a far worse situation.
	The conflict has real implications for NATO, EU and Russian relations. It is a frozen conflict that has moved on slightly, but it dates back to the fall of the Soviet Union. We have to remember that the two provinces, as we have described then, within Georgia—Abkhazia and South Ossetia—were never totally integrated provinces of the state of Georgia. In fact, they were placed in the territory of Georgia by one Joseph Stalin, who just happened to be a Georgian, when he was the chairman of the Soviet Union. They always existed as autonomous units within the territory of Georgia, so there is a danger of looking at the issue too simplistically. Of course we support the territorial integrity of Georgia, but we cannot look at it simplistically in the sense that these areas must be returned as integral parts of Georgia. We need to view the situation as far more complex than that. That is one reason why I believe we will see this revert to a frozen conflict, but with the chess pieces in slightly different places.
	We were all dismayed by the fact that two members of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and two Council of Europe member states had gone to war in the dispute. It challenges all of us to get the situation back to a more sensible position in which we can engage with the people in South Ossetia and Abkhazia at the same time as engaging with the Russian authorities. We should engage in negotiations on an enhanced partnership agreement with Russia, while making it clear that it is unacceptable for Russia to seek to extend its sphere of influence to independent countries beyond its borders that have the sovereign right to determine their own future.
	Together with Russia, the United States and our NATO and OSCE partners, we should prepare the ground for discussions on a renewed security framework in Europe, building on our previous achievements. We need to step up our efforts to seek solutions to all the remaining frozen conflicts in Europe, taking advantage, I hope, of the EU's enhanced credibility as a foreign policy actor and as a valuable counterpart to Russia with regard to issues of security and stability. The EU should further strengthen its relations with Georgia by providing full assistance with repairing the material and economic damage caused by the war and helping it to implement the reforms needed for its consolidation as a modern state based on democracy, the rule of law, good governance and a free market economy.
	Finally, we must demand that Russia honour its agreement with the EU, ensuring that the EU monitoring mission that is deployed to Georgia is able to perform its tasks within the administrative borders not only of Georgia itself but of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. That is absolutely essential. I think that those borders must be opened up to that monitoring mission, as well as to the OSCE monitoring mission. I hope that the Minister who responds to the debate this evening will give us the assurance that we are not going to let up on the pressure we put on Russia to honour the obligations it entered into in the two agreements it made with President Sarkozy back in August.

Mark Hendrick: I entirely agree, but that is very difficult to achieve. I was interested in the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey). The west comes along with aid and investment to which strings are attached—quite rightly—in regard to issues such as human rights, while China has no such concerns. It is very difficult to square that circle.
	China poses a particular challenge. We need to engage in a fair bit more dialogue, and try to persuade the Chinese that it is in their longer-term interests—about which I shall say more shortly—to take account of issues such as human rights, not just in their own country but in Africa. In the longer term, a stable Africa is much more important to China than an unstable Africa.
	Funds from aid are rapidly being overtaken by the amount of investment flowing into the continent from China. Chinese investment in infrastructure, for instance, has already matched that of all the OECD countries combined. As I have said, Chinese money is particularly attractive to African nations because unlike European funds, which are linked to issues such as human rights and good governance, it comes without strings. However, there is an accompanying danger that, as the Foreign Secretary pointed out,
	"commodity boom enriches the few, stunts the diversification of the economy, and leads to poor governance, with rulers accountable to foreign interests, rather than to their people."
	I am sure that China recognises that, and it is to be hoped that in the future it will do what it can to ensure that its investment is positive. A more stable Africa is as much in its long-term interests as it is in the immediate interests of the African people themselves.
	The European Union cannot be replicated everywhere, but it has been shown that prosperity and security can be achieved through the sharing of resources and political power. In that respect, the development of the African Union is exciting and positive. The AU has a long way to go; it operates in a fragmented environment, and at present lacks the same levels of organisational structure, supranational power and political commitment of its members as the European Union. However, it has already played a major role in restoring peace to Burundi, and has deployed peacekeeping missions in both Sudan and Somalia—although, as has been said, there is still a great deal to be done.
	There are three key areas in which the EU and the AU should work closely together. Obviously, as has also been said today, one is conflict. In 2003, the EU deployment in north-east Congo helped to prevent bloodshed, and allowed the United Nations time to reinforce and reconfigure its peacekeeping mission. Today, 3,000 EU troops are trying to stabilise eastern Chad. Obviously there is much more scope for that elsewhere in Africa, for example in Sudan, and we hope to see more and more of it. It is highly desirable for the EU and the AU to act together in a UN context.
	The second is energy. Africa has the world's largest desert, the Sahara, and with it comes huge solar power potential. If we had peace and stability in the DRC, the proposed Grand Inga hydroelectric project on the Congo river could bring power to 500 million Africans for the first time. Through the EU's emissions trading scheme and the clean development mechanism, the EU could help to provide the finance needed to make that a reality. Generating energy in that way could eventually enable Africa to export energy rather than importing it, and rising prices for that energy could lift millions of Africans out of poverty. For the EU, it would mean a new, green energy supply on its doorstep.
	Thirdly, in terms of development, rising food prices are forcing Africans to cut back on education and health care, and to sell off livestock in order to be able to eat. The EU, as the world's largest aid donor and largest single market, can play a big role. For larger-scale agriculture, we need more progress on reducing agricultural tariffs and subsidies, so that in addition to Africa one day being able to feed itself, it could export food to Europe.
	Surveys show that nine out of 10 Africans want to live in a democracy, and events this year in Kenya and Zimbabwe demonstrate this sentiment. Not only is it our duty to support people in this fight for moral reasons at the very least, but democracies are more likely to respect human rights and support open trade, and are less likely to go to war. Rather than just focusing on whether we should support democracy, the EU should concentrate on how to support the institutions and constitutions of African states, and try to work out what forms of democracy could work in weak states and in countries with ethnic and religious divisions or fragile economies. Ideally, democracy should, of course, be home grown, but there are practical ways in which the EU could support democracy in Africa. First, we could use our aid budgets to support accountability and help to support state institutions and civil society, as we are doing. Secondly, trade can be used not just to drive economic growth, but to nurture social and political modernisation. That is why the "Everything but Arms" system and the economic partnership agreements are so important. Offering duty-free, quota-free access to EU markets is also important, which is why aid for trade and a new global trade deal to give all developing countries better access to global markets are crucial.
	We could call for more robust diplomacy to be applied. Where the international community through the United Nations is united in its condemnation of a regime, and where it is prepared to support that with targeted sanctions and to play an active role in mediation, the legitimacy and viability of authoritarian regimes can be undermined.
	In countries suffering from conflict, troops may be needed to provide the security that is the platform for re-establishing democratic governance. The readiness of British forces to provide such security is already well established, as we have seen in different parts of the world.
	Zimbabwe poses a massive threat to the region, as its neighbours will continue to bear the brunt of Mugabe's actions. The UK has made it clear that a continuation of the status quo is not an option. The Foreign Secretary has said a great deal in the debate about what the Government have done and can do. I will not add to that, except to say that in my view we might not be able to remove Mugabe in the foreseeable future without the use of force. I believe it is not enough to will the ends, and that it is likely that we will need to will the means in order to see change in Zimbabwe.
	In 2006, the EU helped the Democratic Republic of the Congo stage its first presidential and legislative elections in 40 years. This involved transporting 1,000 tonnes of ballot papers, and 2,000 EU troops supported the UN in maintaining a peaceful environment for those elections. It is a tragedy that this conflict has broken out and is continuing, and I believe that the EU will play an important role in bringing it to an end.
	My natural father was from Somaliland. I say "Somaliland" deliberately because the picture there is very different from that in the rest of Somalia. Somaliland has been stable and democratic, and it constitutes what used to be the British colony of British Somaliland. There is a system of governance and democracy that has made it very stable. It should be used as a beacon and example for the rest of Somalia, but at present it is not even recognised as a state by the UN, although there are moves to try to change that. If we are going to stop the piracy off the Gulf of Aden, Somalia must become a stable state, rather than the failed state that it is at the moment. Until there is a stable Somalia alongside a UN-recognised Somaliland, that piracy will continue, no matter how many warships we send to the area.
	Finally, the European Union has done much, but it still has much more to do to support Africa. As Africa is the only continent on earth that is going backwards and not developing, we have a duty to provide support through the European Union for the sake of humanity as a whole.

Patrick Mercer: Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I welcome you to your place?
	It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Preston (Mr. Hendrick). I hope that I shall not detain the House for long, and I am sure the House does too. I wish to talk a little about the details of the recent attack in Mumbai and its implications for our foreign affairs and, consequently, for how we are going to deal with a similar attack in the future—such an attack is not inevitable, but it is highly likely.
	First, it is worth mentioning that the attack was thought to have been carried out by about 10 or 12 terrorists, but I believe that is wrong—I believe that we will find that many more terrorists were involved. It might be worth dwelling for a moment on the British experience of this sort of thing. For what they were worth, my comments immediately afterwards were that we are not necessarily terribly well prepared to deal with this sort of attack. They were immediately shot down by a number of different individuals—I shall return to that in a moment—but we are not strangers to this form of attack inside this country.
	It will have been forgotten, but in December 1989, 16 gunmen in an improvised armoured vehicle used automatic weapons, flame-throwers and rocket-propelled grenades to attack a Regular British Army post on the Fermanagh border. They drove off that Regular Army garrison—they were not from my regiment, I hasten to add—killing two of them and capturing a Regular British Army base. When I have said to police sources that it is possible that such an attack could take place, they have replied, "No, it won't, because they can't get the weaponry to operate inside this country." It is worth bearing in mind that No. 10 Downing street was attacked with weapons that were much more powerful than their commercial equivalents.
	How have we dealt with evolving terrorist tactics in the past? After the Mumbai attacks, a number of voices have been raised up in lamentation saying, "Actually, things are just fine." But are they? We must bear in mind that not much more than 25 years ago, when the terrorist threat to our oil and gas fields in the North sea developed, we were pretty quick to develop the Comacchio group. I do not need to tell the Ministers sitting opposite of the excellence of that organisation, which is still in existence. It is based in Arbroath and, to the best of my knowledge, it has never had to fire a shot in anger. It is difficult to say what has stopped those targets being attacked, but I suggest that a powerful, capable, properly resourced and armed organisation such as the Comacchio group has probably deterred—deterrence being the important point—attacks on those sorts of targets.
	I turn to the question of whether British terrorists or British-groomed terrorists have been involved in the Mumbai attack. I have no doubt that such an involvement will emerge, but two important questions need to be addressed. If these gunmen have recently been resident in this country or if the plot was partially or wholly hatched in this country, we need to be terribly alarmed. I do not believe that that necessarily was the case, but I am sure that there were British connections and that many of the individuals will prove to have been British residents, to have been born in this country or to have been British passport holders. If they are found to have been resident abroad for five or 10 years living, let us say, in Pakistan, it will be slightly less alarming, but it will none the less be very concerning.
	This incident is highly likely to lead to further friction between India and Pakistan. Despite the fact that Lashkar-e-Taiba has been blamed for this attack, I have no doubt that the core planning of it was carried out by al-Qaeda. That is why rather than the targets just being Kashmiri, Indian or Pakistan-focused friction targets, British and American passport holders were targeted, as were Israelis and Jews, as has been mentioned. If that is not the hallmark of a core al-Qaeda operation, I do not know what is. Therefore, when we hark back to events such as the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, the subsequent arrests in Pakistan and the arrests there in the past few days, it is crucial to ensure that the tension between those two nuclear-armed countries is defused as far as possible. Those arrests must be seen to be proper arrests, and the individuals must continue to be kept under lock and key and, eventually, brought to justice.
	I ask Ministers to think carefully about the prominence of LET inside this country and the implications of the enemy operations in India. We must consider just how significant and sinister this organisation is, and how far it has penetrated inside this country. For example, I bring the case of Mr. Rashid Rauf into focus. He was a citizen of Birmingham and a British passport holder, and he was heavily involved in LET in its initial stage. Later, he was a very highly placed al-Qaeda operative. I will not dwell on the rights or wrongs of his death. If terrorists are to be killed, well and good, but we should ensure that they have been tried in front of proper court of law and condemned by the appropriate authority.
	I ask Ministers to think very carefully about British involvement in that style of operation. I understand the sensitivities involved, and how difficult it is to draw the boundaries correctly on such operations. However, if terrorism is to be defeated, it must be defeated within the letter of the law.
	If we are reflecting on organisations such as LET, I ask the Secretary of State also to think carefully about Tablighi Jamaat. Although it has denied any involvement in terrorism, a leaked FBI memo, obtained by US media in 2005, raised fears that al-Qaeda was using membership of that organisation
	"as cover...to network with other extremists in the US"—
	and in the UK. I accept the word of Tablighi Jamaat that it is not involved in terrorism, but—with the Olympic games in the not too distant future and its plans to develop a mosque alongside a maritime access route to the Olympic site—I would like Ministers' assurance that it is being examined, watched and scrutinised to ensure that its wholly legitimate aims are not in some way being suborned.
	I wonder how well prepared we are for a similar attack. Why was it different? The answer is that it was not, it is just that more enemy gunmen were involved than we have seen for many years. Do we have the forces to deal with a similar incident? When I asked that question in the media 10 days ago, the Home Secretary and others immediately reassured me that we did. I was extremely interested to see an interview with the Mayor of London in which he said that a combination of the maritime support unit of the Metropolitan police and the Special Boat Service is poised and sufficiently numerous to deal with such an attack on the Thames. What about the Humber or the Severn? What about our other great rivers and maritime targets? Can the Ministers honestly tell me that Milford Haven, for instance, which has been right at the top of the terrorist attack list for the past five years to the best of my knowledge—that comes straight from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—is properly defended against that style of attack?
	We must clearly not become mesmerised merely by the maritime threat that our enemies pose.

Patrick Mercer: The hon. Gentleman has no doubt heard me dilate on that point in the past. We must concentrate on not only London as being vulnerable to terrorism but on our provincial capitals. I ask Ministers to think very carefully, although I do not expect an answer today. We must provide cover not just from the maritime threat but from the airborne threat, too.
	Interestingly, despite what we have heard about the preparation to counter the maritime threat, Lord West of Spithead, the Home Office Minister responsible for security, told Members of Parliament on the Select Committee on Defence recently that he was concerned that no overall body was responsible for monitoring maritime traffic around the country. He said that the Royal Navy is charged with keeping watch on larger vessels but that other organisations, such as the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, local authorities and the police have varying degrees of responsibility over smaller boats. Whatever we like to think, if the Government's own Security Minister is pointing that out as a yawning gap in our security, I would seek the reassurances of the Ministers that we have addressed the subject as seriously as we can.
	Lastly—I promise that this is my last point—we need a root-and-branch review of the special forces that we have available to deal with such a style of attack. There is no doubt that our SBS, our Special Air Service and the police specialist armed response units are first class. They have done sterling service not just in dealing with such style of attacks when they develop but, more importantly, in deterring them before they occur. However, by the time that the groups of two, three or four in which we have seen our enemies operating most recently start to operate in dozens, with two operational theatres being manned by our special forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and the crippling manpower problems faced by the Army at the moment, we will not have enough specialist forces developed, trained and easily deployed. The facilities are not available to get the forces that already exist quickly from one part of the country to another.
	The bombings on the tube in 2005 caught us with our pants down. We were lucky that the numbers of dead and injured were not hideously worse. I implore Ministers to look carefully at the new style of attack and the new volume they come in before we are caught as badly in the future.

Mark Lancaster: It is a pleasure to be able to contribute to this debate. I intend to be brief because I know that other Members wish to speak.
	I was pleased to hear the Foreign Secretary say that he was determined to continue to support our troops in Iraq and in Afghanistan. I wish to focus my comments on one particular issue—the Government's decision to withdraw the Harrier from Afghanistan and replace it with the Tornado from 1 April 2009. There are many arguments floating around as to why that should be, with conspiracy theories about inter-service rivalries—about the Royal Air Force wishing to finish off the Fleet Air Arm or wishing to maintain control over the future joint strike fighter. I am not qualified even to begin to comment on those conspiracy theories, so I will leave that to somebody else.
	Following on from a debate in Westminster Hall, I would like to construct an argument that is based purely on factual answers that I have received to parliamentary questions. Before I do that, I would like to say through you, Madam Deputy Speaker, how disappointing it has been to receive some of those answers from the Ministry of Defence. In the past 10 days alone, we have had to correct the parliamentary record on three occasions. When I first asked whether the Harrier had served in Operation Telic, I was told that it never had, and then, as a result of the answer to Question 239716, we discovered that it had. I asked how much has been spent on operational requirements for the Harrier in Afghanistan, and following the answer to Question 238824, we had to correct the parliamentary record. I asked how many Harrier pilots had served in Afghanistan, and we had to correct the parliamentary record again. I am afraid to have to say to the Minister that I fear that even the corrections to the parliamentary record will have to be corrected in the next few days.
	It is not only hon. Members who are getting misinformation. During the debate in Westminster Hall, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), who is now sitting on the Front Bench, said:
	"In some ways the Tornado brings capabilities that the Harrier does not, such as the 27 mm cannon and the new RAPTOR imaging system—the reconnaissance airborne pod Tornado—which has been used very effectively in Iraq and, I am told, will be in Afghanistan as well."—[ Official Report, Westminster Hall, 19 November 2008; Vol. 483, c. 95WH.]
	That is factually incorrect, as we discovered in the answer to Question 241200 that the RAPTOR imaging system will not be fitted to aircraft deployed to Afghanistan. If Ministers and hon. Members are being given misinformation and the parliamentary record is having to be corrected on such a regular basis, how can we even begin to make these decisions? It is pretty worrying.
	Perhaps we start at a point where we do agree, which is that there were initially concerns that the Harrier's continued operation in Afghanistan would affect its airframe life. I am delighted that that was put to rest in the letter to me from the Under-Secretary after the debate. It appears that the operations in Afghanistan are less of a strain on the Harrier airframe than training for peace in the UK. From a financial perspective, that decision seems to make absolutely no sense.
	During the past few years, we have spent £885 million on upgrading the Harrier to its current performance level in Afghanistan. The upgrade to capability E—an extra capability for Afghanistan—cost £728 million. The new Mk 107 engine cost £122 million. Urgent operational requirements for the Harrier in Afghanistan cost £45 million. The total is £885 million, with annual running costs of £20 million. According to the answer to Question 238825 on 24 November, that is £16.5 million more than if the Harrier were to operate solely in the UK. What will be spent to put the Tornado into theatre? In answer to Question 238826, we discovered that £40 million of urgent operational requirements is needed to bring the Tornado up to basic theatre entry level. We need £7.5 million for the theatre entry standard upgrade and some £20 million to sustain it. That makes £67.5 million simply to change two aircraft over in theatre. The Secretary of State may not take my word for it, but I understand that the National Audit Office is doing a detailed report on the financial decisions taken on this matter, and they will be published shortly. Having been in theatre only two weeks ago, I understand that that report will be pretty damning about those decisions.
	The Royal Air Force has relied on claims that harmony guidelines are not being met. Fascinatingly, I have been trying to get information on this matter out of the Ministry of Defence for some time. Back on 24 March, my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) asked about the matter in Question 193887, and he was told that no Harrier pilots were then breaching harmony guidelines. When I ask similar questions now, however, I am told that the information is not held centrally. Why was it available in March but not available now? Could it perhaps be that the information does not support the RAF's argument any more?
	It has taken me three weeks to establish what the harmony guidelines are. We end up with a complicated picture, as they are different for each of the services. They are different for formed units and for individuals. For example, the Royal Navy sets separated service at a maximum of 660 days in a three-year period. How many Royal Navy Harrier pilots have been away for 660 days in the past three years? I doubt that any have been. The RAF has a separated service planning target of 280 days in a 24-month rolling period. How many RAF Harrier pilots have been away for that period? I doubt that many have. As a serving soldier, I looked at my pay statement last week; in the bottom right-hand corner it tells me exactly how many longer separated service allowance days I have had in the past three years. That is on my pay statement; surely it must be on individual statements throughout the armed forces. If I were in the RAF at the moment, at Cottesmore, knowing that that information was held at a squadron level, I would try to choose a 20-month period which has a minimum number of Royal Navy Harrier pilots, because its harmony guidelines are far lower, and maximises the number of RAF pilots to try and prove the argument. Harmony guidelines are a bit of a red herring in this argument.
	We have had some debate about the capability of the two airframes. I will not go into detail on that, but we have already seen from the answer to parliamentary Question 240495 that Tornado will not be deploying with RAPTOR, as the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for North Durham, said it would. We also discovered in the answer to parliamentary Question 239740 that it will be unable to carry the Paveway 4 missile—the great new weapon that is supposed to help with proportionality. It will, however, be able to do so in the future once the urgent operational requirements are complete. Perhaps that is the crucial part of the argument.
	There is now some acceptance, partly through parliamentary questions that have not been answered, that there will be a difference between the initial operating capability of the Tornado when it first goes to theatre on 1 April 2009, and its final operating capability, which will be higher and will hopefully come somewhere near that of the Harrier. We will not get drawn into the detail of that, but there is an acceptance that there will be a dip in capability initially, after it is first deployed, and we will get back to a higher capability after a period of weeks—or perhaps months. I see one Minister nodding and one shaking his head; perhaps that tells me everything about the confusion in the Department at the moment.
	My question is simple: given that there is now an acceptance that there will be a different capability, why can we simply not delay the deployment of Tornado until its final operating capability is met? That would ensure that the troops on the ground received the same level of support as they do today.
	There are no arguments against harmony. Chinook pilots currently go for two, four or five months, so why is 1 April so vital? Is it simply because we are determined to try to save the red faces of the MOD, which has set that date in stone, or is it because if the Harrier is not in theatre after 1 April, it will be subject to the programme review and face cuts? If neither of those is the answer, perhaps the Secretary of State will say when he winds up why we cannot slip this, when it is only a matter of weeks—I have been assured that it is not months. Will he assure me that there will not be any cuts to the Harrier force?
	These are important matters and I am concerned that the main reason they are not being dealt with now is to save embarrassment, careers and the Royal Air Force's face instead of ensuring that we get maximum protection and support to our troops on the ground. There is risk and that is accepted; Ministers have accepted that there is a risk in sending Tornado, but it is their job to judge whether that risk is acceptable. If we discover in time that they have taken that risk, which the parliamentary answers I have received have shown is unacceptable and unnecessary, and we discover that troops have been injured or—God forbid—killed, it will be tragic, and I, personally, will be determined to try to hold the people who took that decision to account.

Mike Gapes: I would like to begin by paying tribute to the staff who work in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, many of whom work in difficult environments. There has had to be a significant increase in expenditure on security for embassies, high commissions and posts around the world. During my time on the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and when I have visited posts around the world, those people have diligently helped and co-operated with Members from all parties. We ought to pay tribute to them in this debate.
	As well as the increase in expenditure on security, one of the problems that the FCO faces is the fact that it pays the international subscriptions to many international organisations on behalf of the United Kingdom as a whole. At a time of fluctuating exchange rates, that places a particular burden on its budget. I hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Government will recognise that. I have never understood why subscriptions to the United Nations come out of the Foreign Office's budget, yet, from one year to the next, those subscriptions in UK pound terms can vary significantly because they are paid in US dollars. I believe—and I think many Members would agree if they looked at it objectively—that there is a case for having an earmarked discrete UK subscription to international organisations, which should not come out of the budgets of individual Departments.
	There has been a wide-ranging debate, but, unfortunately, I have been chairing a Foreign Affairs Committee meeting in which the Foreign Secretary has been talking about the European Council meeting. I was therefore not in the Chamber for most of the debate, apart from for the opening speeches. During this century, there will be a significant change in the world's power centres. The centre of economic and political gravity is moving to Asia and the focus of the incoming US President Obama will, I believe, be much more on the Pacific than on the Atlantic. We need to recognise that that will have global consequences.
	In his opening remarks, the Foreign Secretary referred to reform of the international institutions and the United Nations. We also need to look at other international organisations, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. We have already seen the inception of the G20, but there will be other consequences over coming decades.
	It is increasingly important that we recognise that the values that we espouse, which were set out in the UN system that was developed in the 1940s—today is the anniversary of the UN universal declaration of human rights—are not universally unchallenged. There is a view in some parts of the world that human rights are not something that we should pursue. There will be a debate in Westminster Hall next week in which I shall be able to say more about that, but it is fundamental that we hold true to those universal values and that we continue to work for them throughout the UN system.
	In the past year the Foreign Affairs Committee has published "Global Security: Russia", "Global Security: Iran" and "Global Security: Japan and Korea", as well as reports on human rights and—I pay tribute to the Foreign Office's quick response on this one—the overseas territories. The overseas territories did not feature in the opening speeches in this debate, but one of our recommendations was that there should be a commission of inquiry into the allegations of corruption and other problems in the Turks and Caicos Islands. The FCO responded very quickly to our report and recommendations. That commission of inquiry is now in existence and is due to report early next year. That is an example of the Government responding to Select Committees in the manner that they should. When Select Committees make serious recommendations, they should be responded to. I am pleased that in our case the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was quick to respond.
	I am conscious of the lack of time, so I want to focus on one final matter. Reference has been made in various contributions to the appalling terrorist acts in Mumbai. Those attacks were not just directed at the Government of India or intended to damage relations between Pakistan and India, but were directed at the British-Indian and British-Pakistani communities and at good community relations in this country. As we approach the celebration of Eid and the many other cultural events and activities throughout the different communities in this country, including in my constituency, people have an opportunity to renew their commitment to harmonious relations among all the communities, of all faiths and cultures in this country.
	We in Britain have an important historic association with India and Pakistan and we have ongoing family, cultural and economic links with that part of the world. It is tragic that the relations between Indians and Pakistanis in the UK should be much better than the contacts between those two countries. Anybody who has been to the Wagah crossing in the Punjab, as the Foreign Affairs Committee did two years ago, and passed from the Indian to the Pakistani side will know how inefficient that border is. It is crazy: people bearing goods take them off their heads on one side, so that they can be transferred to the heads of other people to be carried on the other side. I am talking about an international border.
	One of the good things about what President Zardari of Pakistan said just 10 days before the terrorist attacks was that there is a need for economic co-operation between India and Pakistan. That is vital. As well as trying to ensure co-operation in combating terrorism and encouraging the European Union and our own country, we should be encouraging economic and human contacts on a much greater scale between the countries of the India-Pakistan region. Together they have a common interest in combating terrorism and in building human contacts and political development against the extremists.

John Hutton: I can give that assurance. I thought I recently answered a parliamentary question on that from my hon. Friend. We made it clear in the nuclear White Paper that we will come back to this House to have a vote on that if and when the need arises.
	I have only eight minutes left now, so I am running out of time as I still have 78 issues to respond to. Let me end my comments on nuclear proliferation with the following remarks. The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea has had responsibility for this policy, and I have a great deal of respect for his judgment on these matters. He will know that when Ministers need to make decisions about nuclear deterrence, they are not thinking about the next two, three or five years, but have to take into account the next 40 or 50 years. That is the lifetime of the weapons system that we are designing and, as Members will know when they look at the detail of the White Paper, the new fleet will begin to come into service from about 2024 onwards. We are therefore thinking about a time frame that covers up to the middle of this century. Of course, we would all welcome a world free of nuclear weapons, because that is the sane and, it is to be hoped, it will be the happy outcome of all these discussions, but we must defend ourselves. We must take a reasonable judgment against risk. We know perfectly clearly that others are rearming as well, and the Government are not prepared to deny future generations the benefit and security that current generations have enjoyed from the nuclear deterrent.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) made an excellent speech, and I want to pay tribute to him for the work he did in the Ministry of Defence and also to remind him of the very high regard in which he is held. He made the case that we have made significant improvements in relation to equipment. That is true and it needs to be put on the record. Members who have been to Afghanistan and Iraq will have heard first hand from troops on the ground that they have never felt better equipped and that they feel they have the right kit with which to do the difficult and dangerous job we ask them to do.
	A great deal more work needs to be done on procurement, and the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon) raised a number of interesting issues in that context. Tomorrow, we shall set out some ways in which we intend to improve value for money in defence procurement and so on. Although I accept that more work needs to be done in that area, we must ensure that a balanced range of kit is available to our armed forces. It must allow them to deal not just with what is likely to be the most realistic threat—disputes not between states but within states, given that there are failing states and given the rise of terrorism—because we will also still have to plan, prepare and equip our forces for a different range of missions that could include, heaven forbid, more traditional forms of inter-state warfare. That is a difficult balance to get right. Every Secretary of State in every country in the world wrestles with these issues, but it is right that we try to strike the right balance on all these arguments.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) raised the situation in Zimbabwe, and I praise the work that she has done in all the areas that that involves. We are all seriously concerned about the deepening humanitarian crisis in that country. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and others are working to help contain the cholera outbreak, and we will continue to do all we can to address the basic needs of Zimbabwe's very long-suffering people. The dire situation is clearly the result of a chronic and wilful failure of social, economic and political will, and we continue to engage states in the region. We welcome the contribution of those, such as Kenya and Botswana, that have been willing to speak out against the atrocities that the Mugabe regime is inflicting on its own people.
	The hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr. Walter) raised the interesting question of the relationship between the European Union and the European security and defence policy, and I very much welcome what he had to say. I am not sure that the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) would have been with him on everything that he said about the ESDP. I have said before—I stand by these remarks—that we should take a positive and pragmatic view of the ESDP. That is very much what is enshrined in the St. Malo agreements.
	Both hon. Members raised a specific question about the need for the various anti-piracy missions off Somalia. It might be helpful if I were to tell them that the Combined Task Force 150 mission, to which several hon. Members referred, is primarily a counter-terrorism mission and it flies its flag under the banner of Operation Enduring Freedom. As they will know, that means that some member states in NATO will not take part in it. The NATO mission itself, to which both hon. Members referred, is due to end this month, and its focus is very much on providing escorts for the World Food Programme ships. The ESDP mission is not a duplication; it is a necessary addition and complementary to the missions that are dealing with this growing threat. Those who want to sniff at the ESDP mission display less of an appreciation of the reality on the ground and more of a traditional form of animosity to anything that flies the European Union banner. I think that that is a serious error and we should not participate in making it.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mr. Hendrick) made a number of thoughtful comments on Africa and the role of the European Union in the continent. I suspect that his points are more for my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary to develop and pick up in future debates.
	The hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) spoke about the terrorist atrocity in Mumbai and asked about contingency planning in the United Kingdom. We plan for a range of possible threats, and I know that hon. Members will not want me to go into the detail of all of that. I can say to the hon. Gentleman and others that we have specifically developed plans to protect the UK's vital national infrastructure, and I believe those plans to be in a very good state. It is obviously the case, too, that any such counter-terrorism measures need to be based first and foremost on a strong intelligence-led approach, and that is how we always try to proceed.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) emphasised the importance of progress towards a long-term peace agreement in the middle east, and I think we can all agree with him on that.
	I think that I have referred to most of the comments made by the hon. Member for Newbury, who, I know, served in the Royal Green Jackets. That very fine regiment is now part of The Rifles and we all celebrate their role today. I think he is wrong about the Defence Export Services Organisation; I think it would be a waste of time and money to rearrange the deckchairs yet again. If he were to talk to industry, he would find that it is very supportive of the way in which the organisation is working. The combined mission of my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary and me is to ensure that people in industry would not feel the difference in relation to this change of structure and organisation. Defence exports had their best ever year last year and they sustain hundreds of thousands of jobs right across the country; it is my strong desire to ensure that they do so.
	The hon. Member for North-East Milton Keynes (Mr. Lancaster) raised his concerns about the deployment of the Tornado in Operation Telic. I know that he has tabled a very large number of questions—
	 The debate stood adjourned (Standing Order No.9(3)).
	 Ordered, That the debate be resumed tomorrow.

Huw Irranca-Davies: I note the hon. Gentleman's kind invitation, and I hope that I can take up that offer. As he knows, the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy), recently visited the area, but if I have the opportunity, I will take it up.
	Having said all that, I am not suggesting that Government support will dwindle. We recognise the importance of this issue and the effect that it has on people and their livelihoods. Ultimately, we want to ensure that places that have experienced floods, such as Burstwick and Hedon in the East Riding of Yorkshire, benefit from a joined-up, effective and equitable system of managing excess water. As the hon. Gentleman said, the Environment Agency is in the process of mapping a means that manages the risk of flooding from the sea and main rivers through the Humber flood risk management strategy and the River Hull strategy. The Humber flood risk management strategy—
	 House adjourned without Question put (Standing Order No. 9(7)).